Bernie McGill

I’m back! Did you miss me? Don’t answer that. If you’re wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been at Libraries NI, blogging away like a crazy woman. If you don’t believe me, you can read what I’ve been up to here. See? Told you I’ve been busy.

I’ve just been named a Versatile Blogger – not once, if you don’t mind, but twice, so I must be extremely versatile indeed. (You would believe this if you saw me reach in to the back of the cupboard for the last remnant of the Easter egg which I hid from myself, but not all that well.) The Versatile Blogger is a kind of virtual tag-game in which you name seven interesting things about yourself, and then tag someone else. ‘Sure thing,’ I said to fellow-blogger Lesley Richardson when she mentioned it, ‘count me in,’ and then had a panic attack about the seven interesting things I was supposed to come up with, so didn’t do a thing about it. Then another blogger-friend, Ashley McCook invited me too and I reckon that’s the kind of serendipity you can’t ignore so here are seven interesting(ish) things about me. (It started off innocently enough, then took something of a romantic turn – Spring in the air?)

• I have seven brothers. This would be a more interesting fact if the seventh of them had seven sons. He does not.

• I love mushrooms. I once had a boyfriend who brought me a bouquet of mushrooms as a present. Both my daughters hate mushrooms with a passion. (I didn’t marry the mushroom man.)

• I love avocado too. The first time I bought one, I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought, because it was called an avocado pear, that it was something you made into a dessert. I was cooking for my then boyfriend for the first time and I ended up using it as a table decoration. I burnt the mouth off him with a peppercorn sauce but he still married me anyway. (He does quite a lot of the cooking.)

• As a student in Italy, I spent one memorable night, along with my friend Rachael, four floors up on the balcony of a hotel in Rome with the shutter between us and the Italian police who were searching the bedroom on the other side of the window. They weren’t looking for us, but had it occurred to them to raise the shutter, we’d have had quite a bit of explaining to do. This is a very long story involving shopping trolleys, car number plates, passports (or rather, the lack thereof) architects (doesn’t it always) and the inhospitality of nuns. (The man whose bedroom it was, is the man I later burnt the mouth off with the peppercorn sauce, in an unrelated incident.)

• Not long after we got married, my husband and I were staying with my Mum and Dad. When I got up in the morning, my husband’s wedding ring was on my finger, over my own wedding ring. I can’t work out how that happened. It’s not an easy thing to put a ring on a person’s finger, even with their full cooperation, never mind when both parties are asleep. I still don’t know what it means. (He says he was trying to make his escape, but he’s still here, eighteen years later.)

• My pet hate? When my husband leaves the floor sweepings in the corner of the kitchen beside the dustpan and brush. I mean, how much more effort does it take to actually sweep the freaking sweepings up and into the bin? (Should have married the mushroom man.)

• I like the words ‘escutcheon’, ‘architrave’ and ‘fenestration’. They’re all good words, I think, and they’re all words my husband uses. He speaks a whole other language. (A mention of this may mean he will forgive me, for the sweepings outburst.)

At this point, I’m supposed to tag a few other people, but to be honest with you, I’m all tagged out so I’m just going to send you back to Lesley’s  and to Ashley’s  excellent blogs which are well worth a look. I’ll be back again soon with some interesting(ish) upcoming events but here’s a little taster until then. See ya!

On Saturday 13th April I’ll be facilitating a day-long Short Story Writing Workshop at An Creagán (between Cookstown and Omagh) in a gorgeous room with a wall of glass that overlooks a miniature lake. We’ll be there from 10am till 6pm, writing like mad things, after which there’ll be a group reading by the fireside. Doesn’t that sound like a great way to spend a day? It looks like the workshop is all booked up but if you fancy joining us for the reading, it kicks off at 6pm. There are more details here.  

I’m taking part in a blog hop. (A what?) A blog hop. It’s a sort of benign pyramid scheme for blogging writers. (How did that happen?) Well, Alrene Hughes kindly invited me to take part and tagged me in her blog on 16^th January, along with a number of other writers. Alrene is author of Martha’s Girls, a family saga set in Belfast in World War II. This is her debut novel, it is published by Matador and is available as a paperback and an ebook.

(What now?) I answer the ten blog hop questions, and recruit a number of other writers (below) to do the same. Eventually, there will be no writers left to tag, since everyone will have done it and then it will stop. But until then, here we go…

What are you working on at the moment?

A short story collection, title to be decided.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Well, I wrote some stories and I read some of them in public and some people said, ‘Why don’t you publish a collection?’

What genre does your book fall under?

Tricky, but I’d say ‘Short Stories’ sums it up best.

Which actors would you choose to play in a film rendition of your book?

Oh, nice question. Let me see. A student at a talk I gave recently at Belfast Metropolitan College said she thought Tilda Swinton would make a great Harriet in The Butterfly Cabinet and I love that idea, but I don’t think she’d be right for any of the stories in this collection so sorry, Tilda, no through-casting. Anne-Marie Duff could play Kate in ‘Sleepwalkers’ and I think I’d have Brenda Blethyn for Rhonda in the story I’m working on at the moment. Oh, and the father in ‘No Angel’ could be played by Martin Sheen. I’m sure none of them would have any bother with a Northern Irish accent. Okay, I’ve lost the run of myself. Next question.

What is the one sentence synopsis for your book?

I hate this question because it’s really hard work to answer it, but if I’m pushed, what the stories have in common is a concern with language, with legacy, with memory and with identity, with what’s said and what’s not said: they’re about survivors and they’re about ghosts. (That was originally two sentences but I cheated with a colon.)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will be published in May/June 2013 by Whittrick Press, a new digital publisher based in Northern Ireland. (They’ll be accepting submissions very soon. Go like their Facebook page.)

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The stories have been written over the last five or six years and a number of them have already appeared in print. Some of them were written over a matter of weeks, some of them over the period of a year or more. Many of them were begun in writing workshops and were left to ‘ferment’ for months before I went back to them. I quite like to work like that, to always have a piece of writing to return to. (Which may be the reason that the second novel is taking so long…)

What other books would you compare this to within this genre?

That’s difficult to say. When I look at the Amazon placings for The Butterfly Cabinet, I see that ‘Customers who bought this item have also bought’ books by Zadie Smith, Iain Pears, Rose Tremain, Kate Morton, Agatha Christie, Alice Hoffman, Rachel Hore. I’m very happy to be on that shelf, thank you very much, but I’m not sure what shelf the short stories sit on. It’s possible that they’re not on a shelf. They might be under a table somewhere, at the back of the shop.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Different things. Some of the stories begin with a very specific place I’ve visited, ‘Sleepwalkers’, ‘Home’ and ‘The Language Thing’ are set in Spain, France and Italy respectively. Some of them, or parts of some of them, were prompted by writing exercises in workshops (‘The Recipe’ and ‘The Bells are Ringing Out’). Some of them are prompted by hearing people speak on that public confessional, the radio. (There’s something very evocative and intimate about a disembodied voice.) Some of them borrow from personal experience. Many of them come from thoughts that occur in the shower, water on the head being a great creative stimulant. Often it’s a voice that starts to speak, that has a story to tell. Over time, lots of other elements feed in as well and in the end, because you work it and work it and work it some more, hopefully it becomes impossible to see where one piece of the jigsaw begins and another ends. I’ve just read this, by Flannery O’Connor, one of my favourite short story writers: ‘I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.’ Never a truer word was spoken.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Every copy comes with a free bar of chocolate. (That’s a lie.) Let me see. There’s one award-winning story in here, and a few that were short-listed for awards as well as a couple of stories that are previously unpublished. I don’t have any written endorsements for the short stories, but here’s what author Eugene McCabe said about The Butterfly Cabinet: ‘Bernie McGill’s rare, hypnotic gift for writing fills every page. [It] contains no end of apparently throwaway sentences you want to remember.' Nice! And Tom Paulin liked it too and Julian Fellowes and some other people said some other good things here (you’ll need to scroll down a bit). So, you know, you might like the writing, even without the chocolate.

Is that it? Hurrah! Homework done. Okay, fun bit. Here are the next round of blog-hopping writers who will be posting their Next Big Thing on Wednesday 30th January. They all live on the island of Ireland, and they write fiction, song lyrics, Young Adult books, poetry, as well as for film, theatre and screen. I’m delighted to be handing on the baton to Lesley Richardson, Deirdre Cartmill, Debbie (DJ) McCune, Elizabeth Rose Murray, Briana Corrigan and Anthony Toner who will all post on 30^th January. Go and have a jook.

Lesley Richardson is a writer from Bangor, Co. Down, who is currently writing her second novel, The Possibilities of Elizabeth. Her first novel, Biddy Weirdo, is yet to be published, but Lesley and her agent, Susan Feldstein, are hopeful that that will soon change. Represented by the Feldstein Agency, Lesley has received a grant from The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and a writing bursary from North Down Borough Council. She launched her blog, Standing Naked at a Bus Stop last year and she tweets. 

Deirdre Cartmill is a poet, writer and creative writing tutor. Her debut poetry collection Midnight Solo is published by Lagan Press and her second collection The Return of the Buffalo will be published in 2013. She has written for film, television and radio as Deirdre Alexander and her short film Two Little Boys was produced in 2012. She won the Claddagh Films Script Award and the BBC Writersroom Undercover competition and has been shortlisted for several awards including the Hennessy Literary Award, the Scottish International Poetry Competition and the Red Planet Prize.

Debbie (DJ) McCune  is the author of Young Adult novel Death & Co soon to be published by Hot Key Books. She was born in Belfast and grew up in Carrickfergus, a seaside town just north of the city. As a child she liked making up stories and even wrote some down, including a thriller about a stolen wallaby. At school she hated doing homework, except writing stories for English - which were long enough to make her teachers weep. Debbie read Theology at Trinity College, Cambridge but mostly just read lots of books. She has enjoyed a varied career, but she is currently Head of Religious Studies in an Integrated Secondary School. She lives in Northern Ireland with her husband, daughter and two cats - with seven legs between them. Debbie’s on Twitter and her Author Facebook Page is here.

Elizabeth Rose Murray lives in rural West Cork. Represented by Sallyanne Sweeney, she writes mainly for children/YA, but has adult poetry and fiction published in journals across the UK/Ireland. In 2012, Elizabeth performed in Ciudades Paralelas: Station at the Cork Midsummer Festival. Elizabeth also provides social media training for writers/artists and blogs professionally for major literary festivals including Listowel Writers’ Week, Cork International Short Story Festival and Dublin Writers Festival. Read her poem Book of Us in Southword Journal, visit her Green Fingered Writer blog or chat to her on Twitter. For inspiration, try her Wordspark writing prompts and Pinterest boards.

Briana Corrigan is a singer, songwriter, poet and playwright. Before turning her hand to writing she enjoyed success with the band ‘The Beautiful South’. Last year her first play, The Scarlet Web-Martha’s Story toured Ireland and Scotland. Irish Theatre magazine described her writing as 'skillful' and 'an achievement'. She has also written and released two self-penned solo albums, When My Arms Wrap You Round which reached no 48 in the UK album charts, and in 2012 Redbird, for which Hotpress magazine described her as a 'songwriter of wit, elegance and style'. Briana holds an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Queens University, Belfast. You can catch her on Facebook and on Twitter.

Belfast-based singer songwriter Anthony Toner is poised to release his new album, Sing Under the Bridges, in mid-February, before embarking on a series of live concerts throughout Northern Ireland. The collection, his fifth, follows a string of radio successes - his composition ‘Sailortown’ has become one of Northern Ireland radio’s most requested songs. Other recent radio hits have included ‘Marion, That’s All Right’, ‘The Duke of Oklahoma’, ‘Walking Down the Line’ and ‘Well Well Well’, which was featured on Ulster Television’s weather bulletins, sponsored by Progressive Building Society, for an extended period last year. He has played shows in Nashville on many occasions, and has shared the stage with Nanci Griffith and Guy Clark, as well as showcasing at Austin’s South by South West festival. He’s also developing a following in Canada and recently performed live at Grand Central Station in New York City as part of a Northern Ireland showcase event organized by Tourism Ireland. Always a popular and accomplished live performer, Anthony’s shows include superb guitar playing, background information on the inspiration behind the material, and some entertaining stories from the road. In addition to his musical work, Anthony was a journalist for seventeen years and has also had short stories published in The Black Mountain Review and Breaking the Skin: New Irish Writing anthology. He maintains a popular blog on his own website, which also contains videos, songs and details of his various activities. 

Sunday was a good day. We were getting ready to go out for a walk and while we waited for our girls to extract themselves from their pyjamas (a lengthy task), I clicked on Facebook to see what was happening. The poet Jean Bleakney had sent me a link to the Guardian’s Books of the Year 2012 in which a number of published writers had named their recommendations. ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘this is interesting, potential Christmas pressie ideas.’ I scrolled down through the books taking note of John Banville’s favourites, Ali Smith’s, Wendy Cope’s and then I reached Downton writer Julian Fellowes’ picks, at which point I very nearly fell off my swivel chair. He’d only gone and named The Butterfly Cabinet as his novel of the year (which is why, I realised belatedly, Jean had sent me the link in the first place). I think I may, momentarily, have stopped breathing. I grabbed the laptop and ran down the stairs. ‘Come here, come here!’ I shouted at the family who couldn’t tell from my face if the news was good or bad. ‘Downton,’ I gasped. My husband nodded. ‘Julian Fellowes,’ I said. He nodded again. He must have thought my obsession had reached epic proportions. No plot twist could merit this kind of reaction. Finally, I pointed. ‘Read!’ I said. So he did, and he grinned, and the girls did, and then everyone shouted and there were hugs all round and then the girls got out of their pyjamas and we went for our walk.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a big fan of Downton Abbey. As soon as I heard that the writer of Gosford Park had written a series I was there. Gosford Park is one of my favourite movies. When I was writing The Butterfly Cabinet and reading the first-hand accounts of Victorian servants, I kept seeing those scenes from the film where the kitchen operates like a massive engine room, keeping the ship of the big house afloat. I am a member of an informal online writing group with a number of other friends and while a large part of our time is spent supporting and encouraging each other, when Downton is showing, Monday is given over to post-show discussion. ‘O’Brien, how could you?’ and ‘Mmmm, Branson,’ and ‘Hurrah for the Dowager!’ and ‘No! Mr Bates!’ are the flavour of the day. (I will confess, there is one of our number who is not a fan. She’s a Hobbit kind of girl. She says the second a hairy dwarf appears in Downton she’s in there, but not before. Plot idea, Lord Fellowes?) So needless to say, I’m chuffed. "'What is a weekend?'" Dowager, let me tell you. It's a quiet spell before the week ahead, when an unexpected piece of good news will have you smiling idiotically at your computer screen for a good few days to come. Now if only I could get on with writing the next one (in which, at the moment, there isn’t a single decent frock to be seen).

I’ve spent the last three days eating my way through twelve counties. I’ve had bacon butties in Belfast, sandwiches in Dublin, scones in Waterford and a wheelbarrow’s worth of chocolate-covered raisins in between. That’s the trouble with travelling by rail: your hands are free. But I haven’t just been stuffing my face with carbs, I’ve been listening and writing and reading and chatting, catching up with old friends, meeting new. I’ve been to the Storytelling Southeast Festival in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, where the weather’s been very kind and the hospitality even better. Grace Wells and Lani O’Hanlon were very gracious to let me gatecrash their creative writing workshops on Friday morning (I can’t resist a bit of communal writing – I seek it out wherever I go) and who did I bump into there only old friend Lynda Gough, star of stage and screen, who, last time I saw her, was wearing a fishtail and was up to her neck in water in Big Telly’s production of The Little Mermaid. We had a great chat about myth and story, about clambering over rocks looking for petrified angels, about shapes and shadows, and then we all went off to eat a bit more. I had a reading in Dungarvan Library on the Saturday afternoon. (‘How’d it go?’ texted my daughter. ‘Okay, I think,’ I replied, ‘No-one threw anything.’ ‘They should really practice their aim,’ came the return.) And then off to meet my good friend and former job share partner at Big Telly, Úna Kealy for, yes, you guessed it, more food and banter. Úna now teaches at Waterford Institute of Technology and we were later joined for talk of books and plays, the workings of chemical toilets and the benefits of fresh air by her colleagues Richard Hayes and Catherine Lowry-O’Neill, along with soon-to-be-published author Mary Grehan. (Úna said they’d all love a mention on my blog. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t being sarcastic. I feel a bit like one of those society columnists of the 1950’s – but without any of the perks.) So I’m full to the neck now with good food and good chat and should probably enter a monastery for a while, although that’s unlikely to happen. This is my Artist’s badge from the Festival. I might hang it up on the wall beside my desk for all the quiet days ahead, the days when the rain’s beating against the window, and writing won’t come, when you feel like a complete charlatan, when there’s no-one around to talk books with, and a chocolate-covered raisin is a thing of fantasy.