WRITING — A CRAFTY ART

EVER DREAMED of writing a blockbuster book that sells millions? Or maybe a book that, while not projecting you into the JK Rowling category, wins an avalanche of praise from respected critics? Or maybe one that wins no prizes, sells only a handful (and that to your immediate family) but just gives you a warm feeling as it sits on your bookshelf next to the works of the great masters?
It’s simple, isn’t it? Get yourself a typewriter, a computer or a quill pen, sit down at the kitchen table and you’re away.
Or maybe not. Thousands try it, but only a handful ever get published. And — let’s be honest — a good number of those literary outpourings are not really worth reading.
The only way to write a book and not end up a frustrated basket case is to write it for your own satisfaction. If it should get published, treat that as an unexpected bonus.
We’re talking here about fiction. Non-fiction is another league. Even a clumsy writer may get his non-fiction published if the theme is sexy enough. But in the overcrowded, highly competitive fiction market, an original plot and a brilliant use of words are needed to make your work stand out. Even then, if luck’s against you, you still may be rejected. It’s a lottery. But we’re all dreamers so we keep trying.
Ask David Baird, whose book Don’t Miss The Fiesta! has just been published by Maroma Press. It’s his first work of fiction. And he admits it has been a long haul.
“I tossed one manuscript into the Indian Ocean on the way to Australia. It was so boring I knew nobody would read it. Another failure is gathering dust in a cupboard. And I had several false starts which never got past the first few chapters.
“But now I can think of all those attempts to write fiction as a learning process. Writing a novel is bloody difficult, much more difficult than producing a non-fiction work. Gazing at a blank sheet of paper and realising you haven’t got a decent thought to put on it is pretty demoralising.
“You may have the germ of an idea that starts you writing. But you need more than that to complete a book that makes sense, hangs together, goads readers to turn the page. As you struggle with your masterpiece, you begin to understand how much craftmanship goes into good writing. It takes time and effort to master that craft. Read and re-read writers like Graham Greene and you appreciate the skill of a master.
“As a journalist, I learned to assemble the facts and then put them in some sort of order. And then try to present those facts in an entertaining way. You’re just a bricklayer, using words instead of bricks. Writing non-fiction is a whole different ball game. When you try to write a novel, you find that it’s a far more complex process.”

OUTSELLING DAN BROWN!

How’s this for a fascinating insight into book-readers’ tastes?
Dan Brown’s new book is claimed to be an all-time best-seller. But at bookshops along the Costa del Sol in southern Spain it is being outsold by the latest book from Shropshire-born author David Baird.
“David’s book Don’t Miss The Fiesta! is going like hot cakes,” reported one bookshop.
And that was before the book was officially launched!
The chilling thriller, mixing Gothic horror with a poignant love story and local colour, was presented at a launch party in Spain on October 20.

Don’t Miss The Fiesta!

EVER FELT like just taking off? Looking for that place in the sun? Finding a peaceful refuge far from worldly cares?
Many have done it and never regretted it. Others…well, things have turned out a little differently than expected. And sometimes things have gone badly wrong.
Pondering on escapism and real-life incidents with which he was acquainted, Malaga-based writer David Baird was inspired to write his latest book, Don’t Miss The Fiesta!
The book will strike a chord with more than one reader as it tells of a fugitive from a scandalous past arriving in a remote Spanish village. Ah the tranquillity…and then he discovers he has blundered into an emotional minefield.
Under the village’s placid surface lurk dark secrets and a nightmare of guilt. Don’t Miss The Fiesta! is a chilling tale of passion and vengeance set in the sierras of Andalusia.
Baird, born in Shropshire, England, insists: “The characters in the book are all figments of the imagination and the village of Benamargo does not exist.
“The idea originated,” he says, “with the experience of some friends. They bought a remote farmhouse only to find they had become embroiled in all sorts of family feuds.
“I think many people have stars in their eyes when they seek rural tranquillity. Every place has its history and here in Spain recent history was very violent and memories are long.
“So it’s easy for a stranger to stumble into situations he does not understand.”
Don’t Miss the Fiesta! is on sale from October 1 at English-language bookshops in Spain or online (maroma.press@gmail.com).
It is published by Maroma Press, which also published Baird’s non-fiction book Between Two Fires. That poignant account of the impact of the anti-Franco guerrilla movement won praise from historians Ian Gibson and Paul Preston.
To browse extracts, go to:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?printsec=frontcover&id=gm-IaqeMY-YC#v=onepage&q=&f=false

GOLD STANDARD? YOU’RE JOKING!

Why must British citizens resident outside the UK pay nearly DOUBLE the fee charged to residents in the home country for new passports?
Home Office minister Phil Woolas says that “the British passport is a gold standard in identity documents”. Trying to justify an increase in fees for passport renewals in September, bringing the total to £77.50, he claims it will help ensure the “document security British citizens have come to expect”.
But what about Brits abroad? They are charged no less than 154 euros for the same document.
When Woolas refers to “security”, he is presumably referring to the new “biometric passports”. But are these or the new IDs really secure? It has been demonstreated by several investigators that confidential details can by lifted off biometric passports and cards using a simple software programme and a scanner.
Security requirements are also cited as one reason the British Embassy for Spain has just moved to one of the country’s tallest buildings — a tower block way up Madrid’s main boulevard, the Paseo de la Castellana.
This is as about as secure as the Twin Towers. And hardly a convenient location for the general public. To reach the embassy and consulate you now have to take lifts to floors 38 to 41 of the 774-feet-high Torre Espacio.
How safe are these offices when a power cut could strand staff hundreds of feet above street level.
Trying to justify the high passport fees, a Madrid consulate spokesman says: “It is government policy that the costs of consular services overseas should be borne by those who use the service.”
Wait a minute! Spain is visited by millions of British tourists every year and a fair proportion of these get into trouble and need help. It seems hardly fair that Brits resident in Spain should subsidise services for this vast number of visitors, particularly for the lager louts and criminals whose behaviour brings them into conflict with local authorities.
Most expatriate British are surviving on meagre pensions and are increasingly cash-strapped due to the lower exchange rate. Paying exorbitant fees for new passports is a burden they can do without.

BITTER MEMORIES IN VALLEY OF THE FALLEN

EVEN TODAY Spain is different. A visit to a huge monument 50 kilometres from Madrid demonstrates that.
Europe’s fascist dictators perished in appropriate fashion. Hitler committed suicide as Berlin collapsed in flames and Mussolini was killed and humiliated by Italian partisans.
General Franco, however, died of old age and is interred in a vast granite mausoleum at the Valle de los Caídos. Alongside Franco lie the bodies of 33,800 victims of the Spanish Civil War, combatants from both sides. They were brought there from mass graves all over the country.
Far from being a monument to all those who died in the terrible conflict, the Valle de los Caídos has become a symbol of a brutal dictatorship and a place of pilgrimage for unreconstructed fascists.
Dolores Cabra, of the Asociación Guerra y Exilio, one of many demanding justice for those who suffered under the Franco regime, wants the dictator’s remains removed to a family grave. For her and many others it is “a bloody and painful contradiction for victims of reprisals to lie next to their executioner”.
The mausoleum, topped by a 150-metre cross, is reminiscent of the grandiose structures built by the Nazis. Some 20,000 Republican prisoners toiled to construct it, many of them suffering fatal accidents.
Today some Spaniards want the whole structure demolished, others believe it should be converted into a permanent exhibition to remind the world of the consequences of fascism — something which has long been done in Germany with gory relics of the Hitler regime.
Thousands of foreign tourists visit the Valley of the Fallen every year. Few realise what extreme emotions this symbol stirs in a Spain still grappling with its past.

SPAIN’S FORGOTTEN WAR

From time to time a stray hiker wandering about the ravines and crags of the sierras of Southern Spain stumbles across splinters of human bone bleached by the sun. These forgotten fragments and little else are what remain of a pitiless war which many Spaniards were hardly aware of and which was ignored by the world beyond the Pyrenees.
As a visitor you may well have heard older inhabitants reminiscing about the hard times of the 1940s and “la gente de la sierra”. They are talking of the time when parts of rural Spain were in a state of war because of an anti-Franco guerrilla movement. Several historians have investigated those terrible years, but now for the first time a book in English has been published on the subject.
Entitled “Between Two Fires – Guerrilla war in the sierras of Spain” it is written by journalist David Baird. And it has earned high praise from the historian Paul Preston and Lorca biographer Ian Gibson.
David centres his book on the village of Frigiliana in Malaga province. He sees it as a microcosm of what occurred in many parts of the country, but which went virtually unreported at the time. From a community of just over 2,000 inhabitants, 21 men fled to the mountains and joined the band led by Roberto, the nom de guerre of a legendary chief of the guerrillas.
Although, officially, the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939, armed resistance against Franco and his regime was not over. In the 1940s groups of guerrillas slipped out of their sierra hideaways to harass the dictatorship and try to create a climate of rebellion throughout the peninsula. The authorities regarded them as “bandits” but in Frigiliana, where virtually every family had some connection with the guerrillas, they simply refer to them as “the people of the sierra”.
There were acts of courage and of cowardice, of egoism and of selflessness, of tragedy and of treachery. And those who suffered for the sins of others were, as always, the innocent ones.
The author spent more than five years tracking down and interviewing survivors and scouring official records, from Madrid to Washington. He came across important new documentary evidence about American secret service involvement with the guerrillas and about the murder of three young villagers. Most of the protagonists have passed on, and one by one the witnesses are disappearing.
“In a way I wrote the book to pay a debt,” says David. “I felt I owed it to this community to record its recent history before those who lived through it had all disappeared.”

¿España es diferente?

Unos paises han hecho frente a su historia por vía de las llamadas comisiones de la verdad. Pero esto no ha occurrido en España.
Existe entre los jóvenes much ignorancia con respecto a la historia reciente de España — un conocimiento imprescindible para la construcción del porvenir del país. Pero cambiando tal situación no va a ser una tarea fácil.
Hay un muro de silencio con respecto a muchos incidentes durante los años de la dictadura. Mucho ha cambiado en España pero en algunos sentidos permanece una sociedad cerrada.
Un ejemplo: las barreras encontradas por los investigadores. El caso más llamativo es de los papeles de Franco en las manos de una fundación. Todavía no están disponibles para todos los historiadores.
Los que intentan averiguar los hechos acerca de la guerrilla antifranquista encuentran dificultades de sobra cuando acercan a los archivos officiales.
En unos casos se puede culpar sencillamente la burocracia y la desidia, pero en otros parece existir una determinación premeditada a obstaculizar cualquier investigación.
Muchos documentos se han esfumado.
Todavía no sabemos los destinos de mucha gente. Hay muchas cuestiones pendientes.
¿Es cierto que España es tan diferente?
¿Cuando va a asumir su pasado?
Todavía muchas familias no saben donde están enterados padres, abuelos, maridos… Vea:
http://www.publico.es/espana/235393/pruebas/adn/casi/restos/mayor/fosa/abierta/franco

GHOSTS THAT WON’T GO AWAY

WHILE thousands of families wait anxiously for the chance to give a dignified burial to their loved ones, the drive to investigate Spain’s thousands of mass graves has bogged down in a legal quagmire.
Seventy years have passed since the end of the country’s civil war and 34 since Franco died, but Spain still finds it painful to come to terms with its recent history.
Not everybody wants the victims of executions during the Franco era to be exhumed. Some claim that it will only open old wounds and that the dead should be allowed to rest in peace.
But the real problem is the lack of will on the part of politicians and judicial institutions to tackle the problem. Years of haggling and foot-dragging have delayed a full-scale investigation.
Associations formed by the families “para la recuperación de la memoria histórica” have been labouring to open some of the graves and have the remains identified via DNA tests. But they are often working in a legal limbo and receiving little official support.
They took their case to Spain’s High Court, furnishing details of 143,000 persons executed and tossed into mass graves during and after the Civil War.
Judge Baltasar Garzón, always ready to stick his neck out, gave the interminable legal process a sharp kick, ordering the opening of a case against the Franco regime of crimes against humanity and that 19 graves should be investigated.
But he ran into a brick wall when his fellow judges rejected the case and blocked the exhumations. Garzón reacted by retiring from the case and turning the matter over to courts in the districts where the graves are located.
However, the local courts are proving reluctant to act. Spain’s national government has asked regional governments to take responsibility but most have declined.
Meanwhile, many of the relatives of the victims are old and failing in health. Their hopes of at last seeing their fathers, uncles, mothers interred in properly identified graves fade by the day.

LA GUERRA DESCONOCIDA

Hace más de 50 años muchas zonas de España fueron azotadas por una guerra, una guerra de que el público no fue informado, ni dentro del país ni afuera. Cada día hay menos gente que vivío en su propria carne la lucha por grupos de guerrilleros contra el regimen de Franco. Uno por uno, los testigos se van desapareciendo.

El libro “Historia de los maquis – Entre dos fuegos“ deja constancia del impacto terrible de aquella guerra desconocida en la comarca malagueña de la Axarquía en los años 40. Recoge el testimonio — apasionante, espeluznante y emocionante — de los campesinos. Y también de los guerrilleros y de la Guardia Civil.

Ya el libro ha sido presentado y recibido con entusiasma en Andalucía. En las presentaciones ha explicado el autor, David Baird, experimentado periodista, como llegó a investigar el tema y por que cree que es importante no perder esta parte de la historia de España.

Entre dos fuegos está disponible en inglés y en castellano. Tan grande es la demanda que ya ha sido necesario pedir una segunda impresión de las dos ediciones.

La edición española ha sido publicado por Editorial Almuzara (www.editorialalmuzara.com).

OUT NOW – NEW BOOK ON SPAIN’S GUERRILLA WAR

 

 Spain is still arguing about the bitter legacy from the Franco years. Passions are aroused about events during the long years of dictatorship. A new law, the Ley de la Memoria Histórica, aims to heal some of the lingering wounds but has only succeeded in exacerbating the fierce debate.

Thus, Between Two Fires could not be more timely. This important new book throws fresh light on a forgotten war, which raged years after Spain’s Civil War and went largely unreported.

Author David Baird has scoured official archives from Barcelona to Washington and interviewed scores of survivors to dig out the true story behind the anti-Franco resistance movement. 

Now — after more than five years’ research — his book, Between Two Fires — Guerrilla war in the Spanish sierras, is out. 

This is the true story of what happens when humble country folk find themselves in the front line in a secret war. Leading the guerrillas against Franco’s Civil Guard was a legendary figure, Roberto, a veteran of the Civil War and the French Resistance, charismatic but doomed.

Guerrilleros, villagers, Civil Guards give a moving account of bloodshed and betrayal,  courage and heroism. Little did they know that as the guerrilla war raged, politicians as far apart as London and Moscow were pulling the strings.

In the words of noted British historian Paul Preston: “As exciting as any thriller, yet deeply moving, it deserves to be read by everyone concerned with the history of contemporary Spain.” 

See the pages of this Maroma Press website for more details and how to order this fascinating and significant book.