The Literature Festival, in association with Independent Northern Publishers, offered a series of writing workshops.
Debbie Taylor is the author of best-selling novel The Fourth Queen, published by Penguin, and is the editor of Mslexia, the fastest-growing literary magazine in the UK. She has worked as editor of New Internationalist magazine, and co-edited The Virago Book of Writing for Women. Her workshop offered some practical exercises to help writers get their work noticed by agents and editors.
Neil Griffin took part in the workshop, and has kindly allowed us to reproduce the resultant pitch for his novel Martha's Vineyard:
Martha's Vineyard.
Aspiring novelist and English teacher Bob Hazzard's only friends are Sally, a colleague from Mansden Community College's English Department and the eccentrics who attend his Writers' Group. The surprise discovery of a deceased aunt sends Bob on a pilgrimage from the comfort of his humdrum life in Northern England to the exotic home and vineyard of the estranged Martha where he resolves to put down his own roots and write his masterpiece. However her life and that of her Greek husband Uncle Dimitri, prove to be more sinister than they, at first, appeared and the dark secrets of Martha's vineyard transform Bob's life irrevocably.
As Bob absorbs himself into this new community he unearths some dangerous and brutal truths from his own past. A past that means his future will never be the same again. This is a story of belonging, ambition, self-discovery and betrayal. Through its pages readers will discover new things about who they are and how they think. Packed with curious insights and observations it will appeal to all who dream of writing, of travel and of different futures. Martha's Vineyard is for readers who enjoy modern fiction and particularly the work of Nick Hornby and John O Farrell.
As a teacher, Neil Griffin has found himself in settings from mainstream comprehensives to high security prisons. As a musician and entertainer he has performed with his band the Fabulous Wildon Brothers on stages from the "Bloodtub" Workingmen's club, Stockton on Tees to the Royal Albert Hall, London. As a local politician he has served as a member of Arts Council England and as Mayor of Durham City (a rôle which brought vegetarian Neil to the attention of the nation's media when the fur on the mayoral robes was replaced with fake fur and he became nicknamed the "Veggie Burgher" by the national press). A 49 year-old husband, father and grandfather, this is his first novel.
Read the first chapter of Martha's Vineyard on Neil's own website.
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Last update: 3rd November 2004