Absolution
Penguin
Paperback : 24 Apr 2008
£6.99
The Washington Post
Interview
From the Pen to the Publisher
Absolution was the first piece of creative writing I had ever set my mind to. It started with an idea sparked by The Waterboy’s song ‘A Girl Called Johnny’ and its intriguing lyric about a girl who discovered her choice was to change or to be changed. Those words must have resonated somewhere in my subconscious with my experiences of being laid up in hospital for weeks on end with a sore back – conscious, healthy but unable to move. In any public reading I do, the first question is inevitably about my portrayal of ‘Anna’ in Absolution. Anna, her face and hands horridly burned with acid, lies in a sterile cocoon in hospital yet her strength and personality, especially her vulnerability, never fails to strike a chord with an audience.
When writing was a hobby, I used to lie down on the floor surrounded by cushions and dogs and scribble with a fountain pen. Then it got serious; I became a proper writer and got a tax bill to prove it. I made a timetable with a ‘words for the day’ plan, a discipline I need otherwise I would lie around eating chocolate and watching Murder She Wrote. I thought, for my writing career, I needed to stop and apply bum to seat, fingers to keyboard and use a proper desk and a desktop computer. But that makes my back hurt so I’m back to lying down again – maybe I could start a fashion.
I have always been fortunate that I have a day job, as an osteopath, that I adore. Now I wish I did a job I detested and would be glad to walk away from. I just want more days in the week now. I’m walking a difficult tightrope at the moment. The balance of my osteopathic practice and my writing has simply led to a twelve-hour working day, seven days a week. No doubt it will all settle into a rhythm once I get into a more steady routine. Book two, Tambourine Girl, is the first book written to order so to speak and, so far, I’m ahead of the game.
As publication date for Absolution gets nearer, there is a growing sense of trepidation every time I open my e-mail, wondering what lies in store for me now. E-mails from agents, editors, publishers and PR people are like buses, nothing for a few days and then twelve emails arrive at once. They are greeted by panic and flurries of frantic activity on my part. It’s all very exciting and enjoyable, but there is a constant nagging worry – will it all be all right? One of my colleagues is in the early stages of planning her wedding and we have eerily similar conversations. Venues, invites, clothes, hair, how much do you tell your mother (who will worry about it no matter what)… Every week there is an invite to speak somewhere, a request for a photo shoot, a donation of a book for a charity auction, an invitation to do a workshop. I was rather chuffed to be photographed at a ball, which I have attended for the last eight years but this year, because of Absolution, I was set aside and questioned about the designer of my dress (I lied) and a week later there I was in Number 1 magazine, three pages behind Heather McCartney. I showed it to my Granny who just tutted and said, ‘Just remember to keep one hand on the towel, hen!’
I confess to still being totally nonplussed about how I got published and why it happened to me. I sent the typescript to agent Jane Gregory who edited it (slapped it about a bit as we would say), she sent it to Penguin who were very pleased and said we’ll have this thank you. I paraphrase that but, to me five hundred miles away on the end of the phone, that is how it sounded. Then it started selling round the world…
One lesson yet to be learned is to say ‘no’. Lots of folk ask me to have a look at this and give an opinion on that, and much as I would like to, it’s all time and it’s all time I don’t have any more – working full time, writing book three, editing book two, the constant research, sorting out the PR diary while playing telephone tag with important people. I am collaborating with a friend on a comedy script for the Comedy Unit – the original home of a programme called Still Game. Her writing partner left her in the lurch and she asked me to give her a hand. Working on the comedy takes much valuable time because it involves having meetings, and meetings about meetings. Then I met Niall Clark at the Comedy Unit and he told me he had another crime writer sitting where I was a few years before, also talking to him about doing comedy. ‘I’ll tell you what I told her, you’ll be too busy to see it through.’ Her name was Denise Mina.
I am also involved in a musical called Waterloo Angel. This was written by a guy I sat beside in primary three and we have been causing trouble ever since. On the basis, if I can do it, anybody can do it, he wrote a musical, which is now being taken very seriously by big people in London. I am called in for smidgeons of plot development, a few lines of dialogue, then I rest on the settee, my creative muse exhausted and sip red wine, eat chocolate and watch Murder She Wrote, while he goes to his music room and works hard. Some strange questions come up while being interviewed – why somebody so involved in healing can take so much pleasure in such dastardly deeds. My intelligent answer is the pursuit of truth in diagnosis is the same as that in criminal investigation, just look at how popular the programme House is (a doctor whose bedside manner is very close to my own). The practical answer to the question I suppose is that anybody who cuts up dead bodies, and studies the disease process, has a natural springboard for my type of literature. Another honest answer, in my case at least, is that while I sit and listen to ‘press one for… press two for…’ I plan the long and lingering death for those responsible. But seriously, human personalities are the core of crime fiction, but human frailty and the reasons for crime, the motives for murder are constant...and endlessly fascinating.
More
Penguin Most Wanted are getting excited about Absolution by Caro Ramsay
Calling all Ian Rankin fans…
In June 2007 we publish a fantastic debut crime novel – Absolution by Caro Ramsay – and we’re billing it quite succinctly as the launch of the ‘female Ian Rankin’!
However Caro is a very special author in her own right – and this is one of the most exciting debuts of a British crime series for a long time, probably since Mark Billingham burst onto the scene in 2001. It’s a wonderfully dark and intelligent crime novel set in Glasgow and featuring a vivid cast of police characters in DCI McAlpine, DS Anderson and DS Costello. Normally for a British crime series we take a measured approach to building sales slowly, but this novel is so outstanding we’re going out all guns blazing from the word go. And, I’m pleased to say, the launch is now backed by a fantastic endorsement from Val McDermid:
‘Glasgow comes alive in Caro Ramsay's dark, vivid and daring thriller debut’ Val McDermid
Scottish crime writing is very much in vogue at the moment, with the recent success of Stuart MacBride and Denise Mina. But I have no doubt that very shortly Caro Ramsay will be at the head of this pack.
Caro Ramsay talks about writing Absolution
Absolution started life as a few ideas jotted down in a battered leather notebook. It was so old the inner leaf showed a map of the British Empire. The spark of the story came from the Waterboy's song – A girl called Johnny – about a girl who discovered her ‘choice was to change or to be changed.’ That line has always fascinated me, a choice that is, really, no choice at all.
In the whole book, the girl who has the choice utters not one word, but she’s like a whirlpool, drawing in those around her, whether they notice it or not.
Even with the idea of a premise, writing for me was a passive process; it flows through me, from fountain pen to paper. The characters do what they do as the situation demands. I’m not sure I have much say in it. It was a bit of a surprise to me when my detective stumbled across a dead body early on in the novel. It turned out to be the first of many, but it balanced the book beautifully.
Then, in my own life, I ended up in hospital. I had to stay still for a very long time, and I scribbled in that note book every minute I could. It was my constant companion, my constant fascination. When home, and a little better, I lay on the floor for two months and typed the entire script with one hand on to a battered old laptop borrowed from a war correspondent.
At the end of all that, I had 150000 words, roughly in the right order but had no idea if it was any good or not. Equally, I had no real idea of publishing it – I was writing for the fun of it, just enjoying the creative process for what it was. But having printed it out, I looked at the bundle of paper and decided to take it along to the local writers group. It was a cold blustery Thursday night; it took me two weeks to pluck up the courage to read any of it out loud. The first two pages were greeted by stunned silence, and a few sharp intakes of breath.
But they taught me my craft, about viewpoint, about narrative flow and pace – and how to take criticism! After the writer in residence, a journalist called Ajay Close, had heard the whole book piecemeal, she asked for the typescript to read. Around this time, the writers group did a public reading in Borders Bookshop in Glasgow and two Scottish publishers approached Ajay, asking if I was signed by anyone. She said no, but it confirmed her suspicions that she had something good on her hands. I remember her coming into the library a week later, I was arranging the chairs as usual, and she handed me a piece of paper with a name on it.
Send that to her, she said, she likes nasty women like you.
It was Jane Gregory’s name.
I asked who she was.
She just happens to be one of the best agents on the face of the planet.
It all happened very quickly after that. Jane got back to me asking to see the full script, and then phoned me – well, she didn’t, she phoned a girl in Aberdeen with the same name because I hadn’t included my phone number…and I had submitted the typescript under a pseudonym. In fact, it’s a miracle she tracked me down at all. She invited me to London for a ‘chat’, as she put it.
I flew down to have lunch with Jane and one of the editors. My first vision of Jane was as she came through the door of the restaurant, dressed in a purple cape, red haired and carrying a huge rucksack. She plonked the rucksack on the ground. What was a rather glam lady like this doing carrying a rucksack? She showed me the huge pile of papers that lay within, the submissions for the previous four days. She told me that they might sign one or two authors a year, if they were lucky.
That’s when it hit home, I excused myself and went to the loo and bit my fist really hard.
It was also the first experience of something I still find very surreal, hearing two perfectly sane adults talk about characters I have created as if they are real people. It’s like sharing your imaginary friends with somebody else.
Jane loved the book, absolutely loved it – but could they just change everything about it? Or so it seemed to my rather innocent ears. It was my first attempt and deeply flawed. The editing started. I know now that other writers read their pages of suggested edits, then sulk for 24 hours, then buckle down and get it done. I think that’s excellent advice. 99% of the time the editor is right.
But it took me a while to understand that they were on my side, helping me, sometimes pushing me to write in a way I didn’t have the confidence to do. Then lots of pats on the back when I pulled it off.
Jane didn’t tell me when she sent it out to be sold but I know now it was a Thursday. On the following Monday, a really busy Monday morning, my osteopathy practice was full of screaming children, toys everywhere, the odd Alsatian putting its tuppence worth in, and Jane phoned. I went outside to the car where I could hear myself think and phoned her back. We chatted about the smoking ban that had just been made law in Scotland, chatted about the weather. Then she said, ‘And by the way, we have had real interest in the book already.’ Not much else was said, I didn’t ask who by or what that meant. I went back into work, floating on cloud 9. My next patient promptly fainted. Back to earth with a thump.
Jane phoned back on the Tuesday to ask if I wanted to accept the offer. It was a pre-emptive offer that would close at five o’clock. I had no idea what she was talking about but it sounded good. I thought about it for all of three milliseconds before I said yes.
It was on the second phone call, about two hours later, that she told me how much was being offered – ten times what I had thought – and that it was Michael Joseph, Penguin. I had to go and bite my fist again. The whole practice went mad, those who knew were ecstatic, those that didn’t thought I had sold a house!
Then I went home and I celebrated by eating a whole tube of Sour Cheese Pringles to myself.
Penguin sent me a welcome pack with books of the writers in my stable…I had to bite my fist again. These were Nicci French, PJ Tracey, Jonathan Kellerman and Nick Stone: proper writers.
A week after Absolution was accepted, Beverley Cousins, the editor at Penguin, took Jane and I out for lunch. I always think that these situations are easier for a guy to dress for than a girl. I choose a black linen suit. I remember Victoria Wood saying that no matter how hard she tries, she always looks as though she had stumbled up an embankment after a derailment. Me too! I dressed very carefully for that meeting, but the Ukrainian taxi driver got confused, and Jane and I had to run the last hundred metres down the Strand, in the wind and rain to arrive at Penguin looking on the bedraggled side of ‘wind swept and interesting’. I had a brief intro to lots of members of my ‘team’, all with job titles that were totally alien to me, but I was assured, as Absolution made it’s way into the big wide world, I would meet them all again.
Then we had lunch, mostly playing fantasy by casting the film with all our favourite actors, and gossiping a fair amount. I was just settling down to my rather excellent macaroni cheese when Beverley pulled the edit notes from her handbag – ‘just a few changes’ she assured me. I took a huge gulp of water to remove the look of panic from my face.
She assured me she had just edited a much more experienced writer than me and he had thirty pages, so I was getting off lightly at a mere thirteen.
The editing was sympathetic; again it was more encouraging me to push myself a little bit more technically, the usual plot glitches, typos. Her suggestions fitted very naturally, which is always a good sign, but it was a big job, adjusting one word in a 400 page novel can have repercussions, like flinging a stone into calm water – you never know where the ripples will end. I view writing a novel as I do running a marathon – don’t worry about the whole thing, just worry about the bit directly in front of you. It’s a good way to edit as well, follow each ripple as it goes.
Beverley was kind. And kind enough to acknowledge when she’s wrong. Not that I was right but characters resisted, I was getting a square peg in a round hole feeling. A brief chat and it was sorted. Then another, finer edit arrived, another 13 pages of small changes, typos etc.
Then to the copy editor who pulls out all sorts of question from the text. If that place is real change it. Change that name. Move that house round the corner. Now I know why cityscapes change in novels. When that was over we played another round of fantasy casting.
Another fist biting moment came when I opened a file called Absolution on my PC. It was the cover; it said it all: atmospheric and slightly chilling. I would pick it up in a bookshop.
Then I had to have my photographs done. Two hours of ‘stand there’, ‘look here’, ‘do this’, ‘do that’, ‘look scary’. I managed to do the last perfectly fine. 86 pictures, three of which were useable. Loads of faffing about with lights and some woman kept appearing and dusting my cheekbones. My long blonde hair caused him trouble. ‘It’s easy to look like Pamela Anderson,’ he said. Girly but threatening, I insisted. He pulled it off magnificently.
Around this time I got an email saying I had been chosen as one of the great eight of 2007 and, yes, it was back to the fist biting thing. Penguin are flinging the entire weight of their marketing team behind my book. I had visions of going round the supermarkets dressed as a fairy like Jordan, but Beverly assured me this would not be the case. (I hope.) I have the same marketing team as Jamie Oliver and Victoria Beckham. I’m not sure yet what they want from me, but I’ll be up for it.
That was another lunch having a fascinating conversation with a woman whose job it is to liaise with WH Smith. It’s a whole different world, and all the people round that table are focused on promoting something that is a product of my own warped imagination.
I feel I’ve done my apprenticeship in reverse – I’ve never started a novel and not completed it. No training in writing or journalism. No rejection letters. I was dropped into a very big pond and I had to sink or swim, I was lucky to get such generous help from both agent and editor who must have found it trying, at times, to deal with such a complete novice.
By next June Absolution will be out in the big wide world. Its sequel is at 120,000 words, books three and four are still in a battered notebook, still scribbled in fountain pen, waiting their turn.
Product details
Format : Paperback
ISBN: 9780141029245
Size : 111 x 181mm
Pages : 416
Published : 24 Apr 2008
Publisher : Penguin
Absolution
£6.99
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