Dushanbe’s huge new National library (empty), National museum (empty), colossal Presidential Palace and grandiose public spaces sparkling with fountains and immaculate rose beds are soon left behind. It’s a tiny city with a population of only a million and within minutes of leaving the main street we are out in the countryside. There are fruit trees and corn fields and linear villages in the valley enclosed by purple-brown folds of bare mountainside, all under a baking blue sky. Yesterday when we flew in it was 35 degrees, and it’s going to be just as hot today.

Olga’s place has been taken by her Tajik counterpart, an entirely different proposition. Oris is a Tajik Pamiri, from the Badakshan region in the east of the country. He is an Ismaili Muslim, the son of teachers, who speaks several local languages – these are totally different, not just dialects – as well as Russian and fluent English and German. He spent a year as a student in Aachen, on a German scholarship. He is young and clearly highly intelligent, with a thin Persian face and long black eyelashes. He works as a tourist guide for several organisations, but intends to start up a trekking company of his own. It sounds like a good plan, because tourism in Tajikistan is in its very early days and there is room for significant development. We also have a driver. Nuraddin looks quite different, although he is also Pamiri – in fact with his broad, creased face and gold tooth he could be the proprietor of a Turkish restaurant. In Soviet times his job was driving a truck up the Pamir Highway. So we are in good hands.

We are now in a little five-bedded room opening directly into the courtyard of a homestay in a place called Khalaikumb, having driven an eight-hour day from Dushanbe, almost all of it on twisting dirt roads. We came over a mountain pass at an altitude of 3258 m, and are now at the Afghan border. A narrow river separates us from it. There is a lot going on in this little town tonight, and we have to get out of here by 6 am tomorrow – news of that will follow when I have more time.

The oddest thing that happened today was Oris pointing out a man and a horse at the side of the road.

‘See him? With the horse? He’s German. I met him two months ago in Murghab. He bought the horse in Kyrgyzstan, for 2000 euros. He’s walking and riding through Afghanistan and all the way back to Germany. With his – what do you call it? – cello’.

I know no more. I wanted to stop and fire questions at him, but apparently the German horseman won’t speak to anyone. When he stops for the night he just sits alone outside and plays his cello.

He’s probably already sold the book. Matt Damon will play him in the film.

Driving east out of Almaty to visit Choryn Canyon, a sort of mini-me Grand Canyon that is the southern Kazakhstan tourist must-see, a navigational miscalculation by our guide/minder took us 100 kms in the wrong direction. Olga is a good-looking woman with an impressive level of self-confidence not quite matched by her practical abilities. As we approached the Chinese border she grew uncharacteristically quiet and started fiddling with her map. We noticed that the unremarkable road across bare steppe suddenly widened into a smooth six-lane highway with unusual markings on the tarmac, and did a shamefaced U-turn. It transpires that in Soviet days this road so close to China was intended to double as a landing strip for aircraft and troops in case of international dispute.

The Canyon, when we finally found our way to it, was fairly spectacular although perhaps not worth quite such a long detour. We would have liked a longer walk amongst the wind sculptures, but another five hours’ drive to the Kolsai Lakes lay ahead. It was dark when we arrived at a cluster of primitive cabins above the first of three mountain lakes. The spartan little rooms share bathroom and cooking facilities. Our fellow residents were a pair of retired Kazakh army generals (‘very big people’ said Olga, impressed) and an ambiguous lady who slipped out of the room whenever a camera was produced. They were a jolly and overpoweringly hospitable trio, although the senior General exhibited a touch of steel when we tried to refuse yet another round of vodka toasts. To International Friendship! To England! To Kazakhstan! Five or six large vodkas in 40 minutes is way above my grade, and it wasn’t easy afterwards to do justice to the dinner they insisted we share with them. Horse steak, calf’s tongue, Russian sausage, spiced potatoes, pickled carrots – very good, though. Again, to International Friendship!

We had two days of brilliant hiking in the high mountains that form the border with Kyrgyzstan, climbing between huge spruce trees and picnicking beside the glassy lakes with the perfect reflections of golden birch trees. Poor Olga developed blisters an hour into the first morning, and wasn’t able to come out again. There was no one about except us, although the weather was perfect – cool and clear, with scented days and chilly nights electric with stars.

Then last night a really bad thing happened. I sat on my Kindle and broke it. This isn’t even the first time – two years ago I made exactly the same blunder on a yacht sailing to South Georgia. At least I had the boat’s library to fall back on last time, even though it consisted mostly of biographies of Nelson. Now the only reading material I have to see me through nearly a month on the road is the Lonely Planet Guide to Central Asia. So if anyone doesn’t feel like shelling out 20 quid for the guide itself, I can advise on where to find a cheap pizza in Tashkent because I’ll have it off by heart by then. Actually, I felt so miserable when I did it that if I’d had a gun I would have shot myself. All those downloaded books I was looking forward to…

BUT it does make me think how wonderful a real book is. You can sit on it, prop up a chair with it, stand your cup on it, even fall asleep and drop it in the bath and all it needs is a few hours on the radiator to fix it.

Now we are back in Almaty for a last night at the No-View Hotel – otherwise known as Hotel Nyet, or the Otrar. Tomorrow at 6 a.m., Olga will pick us up for the airport. Or the Farmers’ Collective, or the road to Omsk, wherever her quirky sense of direction will lead. On our way to Tajikistan!

Deep within the halls of Almaty’s Central State Museum, behind several bombproof doors with wheel locks guarded by fierce Kazakh women, is the so-called Open Collection of golden adornments. These ancient Scythian pieces date from the 8^th century BC, and are made of pure gold so finely wrought that the display vitrines contain built-in magnifying glasses to allow tiny carved antelope and fish with turquoise and cornelian eyes to be seen in full detail. Hundreds of tiny ears of grain decorate a collar, a diadem is edged with threads of minutely twisted wire, all the 24-carat gold has a burnished glow. Fabulously beautiful. Otherwise the museum is as you would expect. Ethnographic displays of yurt dwellers and herding folk, models of stelae and petroglyphs, and a huge hall devoted to the life of President Nurbayev.

Almaty is a modern Soviet city; it’s still hot here but is an easy place to walk in – there are grids of leafy streets and lots of fountains, cafes to dawdle in and all kinds of restaurants, and plenty of western designer shops for the Audi and Merc-driving classes to enjoy. There seems to be plenty of money around, except in the northern fringes near the main bus and train stations where we have been today. We’ve seen the cathedral, the mosque and the main market. We’ve taken the cable car up to the high place to see the view, and we’ve taken a ride on the new metro – only a handful of stations, almost rivalling St Petersburg in splendour, work on building the rest of the system now cancelled due to ‘the freezes’ as a subway policeman in a magnificent hat explained to us in pretty good English.

Most striking is the variety of faces. The ethnic mix features Tartars, Mongols, Persians, Koreans, Roma, Caucasian, Chinese and plenty of others, with seemingly no distinctions made between any of us.

Phew. The copy edit is finally signed off, and the book proofs are in production and will soon be sent out to the trade and reviewers. The speck at the bottom of the inverted pyramid (me) has completed her work, and the people in editorial and publicity and marketing and sales (upwards) are beginning theirs. The title is agreed. It’s THE ILLUSIONISTS (hooray!!!) The cover is morphing, as these things tend to do – here’s the latest version.

My bag is packed, my boarding pass is printed, and this time tomorrow I’ll be in the air, en route to Almaty in Kazakhstan.

More news from the road

Exactly a week to go before leaving for the big Central Asia adventure/research trip. Getting the visas for five post-Soviet countries has been a steeplechase, and we have fallen at the last fence – Azerbaijan. An ordinary tourist visa takes six working days to issue, so we calculated on the basis that it would take – six working days. Ah, but that doesn’t include the day you take your passport in or the day you pick it up again, so that actually makes eight working days. Our passports wouldn’t be ready to collect until October 3^rd, by which time we will already be in Kazakhstan. Our brilliant operator, Wild Frontiers, think it’s possible to apply for an Azerbaijani e-visa which can be processed while we’re travelling and which we can then download somewhere or other en route. Fingers crossed this works – or in a month’s time we’ll be stuck in the port of Turkmenbashi, wistfully gazing across the Caspian Sea to Baku.

In the meantime I’ve been working on the copy-edit of The Company of Strangers. This is still the title as of today, although my agent, my publicists and I are going to meet up with the editor and the marketing team on Tuesday, when the final decisions on this and the cover will be made. I have my preferences, but the author is only one cog in this machine. The meticulous copy-editor has pointed out some inconsistencies in the book’s timescale, luckily not too difficult to put right. Inexplicably there are also a couple of chunks of text missing altogether. But it will all be off my desk tomorrow and the next time I see it, it will be a book!

Whenever I plan a walking trip I fondly imagine that I will get some serious thinking done as I go.

This time I was completing the four-day final section of the Pennine Way, up from Hadrian’s Wall via the Kielder Forest and the Border ridge to Kirk Yetholm in Scotland. It’s about sixty miles of fabulous but remote countryside and I was quite sure I could tease out some plot convolutions in the book I’m just starting, and come home tired and happy and ready to start writing.

I really should know better by now.

Nowadays any walk more challenging than nipping out to the shops occupies my whole mind. There’s a constant ribbon of monologue.

“Is this the right route? The path forked a mile back, didn’t it? Maybe I’m trudging in the wrong direction. I should check the map again. Is that a bank of storm clouds ahead? Which pocket did I put my fleece hat in, and should I stop now and burrow for it before the rain starts?  Is the twinge in my left knee getting worse? Have I got enough water? Will it get dark before I reach the remote village? Careful over these tussocks. Sprained ankle would be a problem up here. Hey, look at that view. Where did I stow the camera?  No, that’s the mobile, uh-oh, still no signal, can’t warn anyone I’m slower than anticipated. Is that a curlew? Phew, this is quite a climb. Annoying wrinkle in my sock but I’m not taking my boot off in this mud. Another four miles? Three, maybe? Do I need an energy-giving piece of chocolate?”

And so on.

Plot convolutions? Chapter sequence even, maybe some snatches of lively dialogue? As if.

Consequently I am back at my desk without having made an inch of creative progress, but on the other hand there are sixty satisfying miles behind me, and some great memories.  Maybe it will feed into something else. Maybe I was thinking subliminally. (Always a good get-out, that one).

Anyway, I’m just embarking on the sequel to The Company of Strangers.  I’d like to get a chunk of it written before I head off to central Asia at the end of the month, but the copy-edited manuscript of the first one will be in next week and it will take me the best part of a week to read through and sign off on that.

Maybe I’ll be able to get things really worked out in my mind while I’m away travelling. Or maybe not. (“Where’s the station? Will the bus get me to the airport on time? Might this stew have …er… dog in it? When can I wash my clothes? What was the exchange rate? Have I just asked for a room for the night, or a man for the night?” Et blooming cetera.)

Travel narrows the mind in quite a lot of respects. But then ….once back, the ideas bloom like the desert after rain.

Is this the right path?

The text came back a second time for further revisions! In my own defence I have to say that it was for amendments not highlighted the first time round, specifically to do with three scenes racing ‘from nought to sixty’ too fast, and therefore requiring some further build-up to heighten the tension. Not difficult to do. And also some further cutting…bye-bye research… more painful, but probably no bad thing. The trouble with having done the background reading and made the geeky discoveries about a Wimshurst machine or the construction dates of the Metropolitan tube line is that you want to put it all in, not always to the reader’s total fascination.

I think it really is done now. The copy editor will be doing her work over the next few weeks and in the meantime book proofs will be made and distributed to key readers and buyers in early September.

AND there is a title, and a first jacket design with lovely artwork.

It’s going to be THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS (I owe it to my editor for coming up with this good solution) and here’s the rough. Everyone likes it, but it’s not quite settled yet….

Publication date March 6. More news soon.

In the meantime I have been planning and organising a long trip to central Asia, setting off at the beginning of October. It’s partly research, and even more for the sheer joy of going to unlikely places. I have just dropped off my passport at the visa desk of the Embassy of Tajikistan, and I’m reading Fitzroy Maclean’s book EASTERN APPROACHES and rereading THE GREAT GAME to put myself in the mood.

I’ll be telling the story of the journey here, and putting up lots of pictures I hope.  Follow me if you can.

Off the revised text has gone again.

I have inserted the suggested new scenes to illuminate aspects of the main characters and to plump up their story. (More warmth! More passion! Heightened tension! I hope.) I have also cunningly woven in sentences and paragraphs in other places where I was sure I’d put in all the detail but actually hadn’t. It’s a fine line between not saying enough and going on at tedious length, though. I hope I’m on the right side now. That’s where editors come in, isn’t it? I’m lucky to have mine.

I have really enjoyed the process. It’s less creative than the writing, obviously, but there’s a miniaturist and precise satisfaction in it, rather like darning. That shows how old I am. However, a novel that was supposed to be shortened is now several pages longer. Cutting is so hard. I also know from experience that all the bits you are particularly fond of are the ones that should probably go first, so I’m prepared for more chopping at copy edit stage. I had a lovely time researching my Victorian stage magic and l’m thinking of that as its own reward, rather than needing to see it regurgitated on the page. Doing the research is one of the great thrills of the job, whether it’s nosing in the library or travelling to some offbeat place, but I always frugally want to use it all. I’m still learning that you don’t have to bring in everything in one place; it might come in useful in the next book, or the one after.

My editors are now looking at the revisions (I’ve just been asked somewhat ominously if I am able to do the detailed work in Track Changes.  Could a person who remembers darning deal with Track Changes? I think not). I am spending the interval gazing out of the window and turning the next book over in my mind. It’s a sequel. I’ve never attempted one before, so it’s interesting to plan. I’m also doing some broad background reading in early 20^th century social history. For my own pleasure, I’m re-reading W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. It’s a circular meditation based on a walk through the Suffolk countryside where I am now, so it has extra resonance.

The sun is shining on the North Sea.

Not a crowded beach

A reader has just asked an interesting question: ‘What percentage of the changes <to the recently submitted novel> are coming from you personally as compared to suggestions from your editing team?’

OK. When I sent the manuscript off to my agent at the beginning of May, I believed I had got it into the best shape I could manage at that point. I’d been wrapped up in it for over a year and it had come to the stage where I couldn’t see it clearly. It’s always a great relief to  turn a finished draft over to the professionals for a dispassionate appraisal. Family and friends are generous readers; possibly too generous….

The agent is always the front-line opinion. This time he judged it good enough to send direct to my publishers. There, the commissioning editor and her desk editor each gave it a very thorough reading. And then they came back to me with 5 closely-typed pages of suggestions on to how to improve it, under the headings Narrative arc and climax; Heroine; Hero; Hero and heroine together; Broader cast of characters; Dialling up the tension; Title.

Eeeeek. Sounds alarming? Initially it is, just because of having to engage with it all again, when I’m already brooding on the next one. Once embarked, it’s fine. As I work at it I realise it’s not major – it’s not a rewrite in any sense. More to do with adjustment and amplification. During which process I think, of course, I really should have seen that omission/overstatement for myself. I never react against the editing verdict. Editors are highly skilled, and their goal (a really good novel that will please my readers) is identical to mine.

The answer, therefore, is about ninety per cent. It’s so high because by the end of a complex book one needs a fresh perspective, and unless the book gets shoved into a drawer for a year or so, it’s impossible to provide this oneself. The other ten per cent is small-scale rewriting of clunky paragraphs, and routine removal of half the quota of adverbs. I expect the other half will go in the line edit, which will be the next stage.

Chipping away at the redraft of the new book.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of inserting a sentence or two where I thought I’d successfully captured a scene, but on re-reading discover that it may be in my imagination but it’s nowhere on the page. Elsewhere there are paragraphs to be stitched into the existing text – expanding the action, skewering a character, linking two episodes more smoothly or slicing up indigestible chunks of narrative. There’s cutting to be done too – background research I’ve thrown in because, hey, I’ve done the research, boring over-amplification, as well as purple descriptions or redundant qualifiers (a significant weakness of mine). Occasionally new scenes are called for, complete episodes to be devised and written and (somehow) seamlessly inserted.
It’s complicated. You have to concentrate hard on the detail, and at the same time hold the entire narrative in mind.
There’s always the threat that once you start to unpick, the whole precarious construction will unravel…
Progress has been impeded because I’ve been away on two trips in three weeks. They were planned long ago, before the end of the first draft loomed. The first was to walk a section of the Pennine Way, three long days from Dufton in Cumbria and on up to Hadrian’s Wall. I’m walking the whole route in leisurely chunks, three or four days at a time, and have loved every step so far. Walking helps me to think, and I let the novel luxuriously simmer in my mind as I tramped over the moorland. After that I was crewing aboard a 1934 sailing yawl in a regatta in Italy. Unfortunately I’m not a sailor – although I long to be. For the three days of racing I had to focus every mental and physical fibre, braced to keep out from underfoot whilst being in the right place to make my contribution – all this against the yells of ‘Trim on, trim on, trim, trim, TRIM’ and ‘sheets in the water’ and ‘starboard runner’ and all the rest of the fearsome dialect sailors employ. It was thrilling. We came third in our class. But I didn’t have a shred left over for considering my narrative arc.
Pluses and minuses, then, on the travel front.
Now back at my desk, and I’m staying put until the job’s done. Even if the sun comes out.
Pictures will be in the gallery as soon as I can sift them.