Where the streets are paved with gold....

I’ve been in London for the weekend doing a bit of research around Camden where I was introduced to the City’s alternative community. The place is full of different tribes; punks, rockers, goths and emo’s, and whilst it is now a tourist trap full of stalls all selling the same ‘independently’ made items, it still has something of the 1960s ethos that I hope to capture at the beginning of the new novel.

I got a good look around the market and the lock but unfortunately could not see into the Camden catacombs as these have been locked away, I assume for safety, but I reckon they would make a great tourist attraction.

We stayed at the lovely Hoxton, which is a great hotel in that now very trendy area of Shoreditch. I was surprised at how that area of London had changed, with Spitalfields Market looking all shiny and new. Last time I had a look around this area (for a novel that sits in my bottom drawer to this day), Spitalfields was a hole in the ground.

We had some great meals at the new Boundary and a little Italian restaurant across from the hotel, plus a great Sunday roast in The Waterpoet pub.

I had been reading (on an iphone app which worked really well) Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, a great YA novel set in the not too distant future where a terrorist’s bomb causes the US to slip into a period of reactionary meltdown. Marcus gets caught in the fall out from the bomb and before he knows it he has been detained and shipped off by Homeland Security to an unknown destination. The book explores our rights and a Government’s need to stay within prescribed measures and not deny those laws enshrined in law even with the enormity of the situation. Marcus ends up running his own cyber guerrilla group against those who saw to abuse him of his rights. It’s a poignant, clever book which should be required reading in schools and universities. It lead me to visit the Taking Liberties exhibition on at the British Library which looks at the struggle for rights and freedoms across this country from the Magna Carta to today. There was also a great short play put on by Lois Tucker called Glitch.

Little Brother has also been released by Doctorow under the creative commons license which means as well as it being available in book form, Doctorow also reserves the right to release his books for free electronically. This is obviously working because based on the free iphone copy I bought a paper back version of it so that Madame Vin could read it.

We were also able to briefly catch with old friends and their ‘double trouble’ twins in a small coffee shop somewhere near a street flower market.

I’ll write up more at the weekend and include some photo’s of venues for ‘Hellfire.’

Read this week:

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

New Year Already...

Happy New Year…

Madame Vin and myself spent Christmas at my sisters and brought in the new year at Jo ‘n’ Jo’s close to the beaches of Portobello. A fine time was had by all with much merriment and a little imbibing of drink. I didn’t make any New Year resolutions, not because I don’t think I need the improvement, just that I would never stick to them.

Jo 'n' Jo and Madame Vin enjoy the beach.

Now I’m back at my desk with a few days of relative bliss and calm before starting on the next novel in the Gap series. I’ve started to do much in the research and already have a good idea of what happens in the first few opening chapters. The next few lines are me thinking aloud.

I started off wanting to use The Rolling Stones as the band Sarah goes to see in London, mainly because I’ve always loved their music and they represented the 60s, the rebellious youth.

Very early pics of The Rolling Stones can be found here. They look so young and hardly rock and roll. Interesting that originally their management attempted to get them to wear uniformly similar jackets but this was quickly rejected for more of a rebel look, unlike the Beatles who stuck to their uniform look for some time.

However, I want to place the novel in about 1968 to tie in with ‘DarkFather’ and to ensure that Sarah is old enough to want to go and see such music. She’s at an age where she wants to rebel, she’s getting into boys and music. I don’t want her to be as innocent as Terry and Benjamin because times have changed, the Second World War saw to that. Anyway, whilst checking on the Stones gigs for that year it quickly became apparent that they didn’t play London, plus by 1968 they had become quite famous, so I started checking into gigs that did take place.

On the 6th September 1968 The Doors played their only UK gig at the Roundhouse in Camden. The Roundhouse is a wonderful old Victorian building originally built as a turning circle for the London and Birmingham railway and later used as a gin warehouse. Just the sort of venue that fits with the Gap novels, as it has history and living memory that can be put to good use, plus the gig was an instant classic (not that many children will realise, but I want the books grounded in history).

Coincidence seems to play a lot in the Gap novels. I start thinking up something and then find that something very similar happened or exists ready for me to make use of. By setting the gig in Camden and the entrance to the Gap in the Roundhouse, I then did some research on the area and low and behold I found the Camden Catacombs, a series of tunnels and archways under Camden that is perfect.

The gods of the Gap are smiling on me and its only January the first.