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This is my first ever blog tour post, so I’m going to admit to being a little anxious writing out this post. I keep telling myself it doesn’t have to be perfect, but I can’t help myself! The number of times I have backtracked this little paragraph is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Especially because I am so grateful and honoured to have Lynn Michell, the author of The Red Beach Hut<\/em> herself, writing a guest post for my little corner of the internet!<\/p>\n “Their\u200b \u200beyes\u200b \u200bmet\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200blocked.\u200b \u200bPulling\u200b \u200bhis\u200b \u200bhand\u200b \u200bfrom\u200b \u200bhis\u200b \u200bpocket,\u200b \u200bNeville\u200b \u200bwaved.\u200b \u200bOnce.”<\/p>\n Eight\u200b \u200byear\u200b \u200bold\u200b \u200bNeville\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200bthe\u200b \u200bfirst\u200b \u200bto\u200b \u200bnotice\u200b \u200bthat\u200b \u200bthe\u200b \u200bred\u200b \u200bbeach\u200b \u200bhut\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200boccupied\u200b \u200bagain.<\/p>\n Abbott,\u200b \u200bpanicked\u200b \u200bby\u200b \u200bwhat\u200b \u200bhe\u200b \u200bbelieves\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bhomophobic\u200b \u200bcyber\u200b \u200battack,\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200bon\u200b \u200bthe\u200b \u200brun.\u200b \u200bThe hut\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200bhis\u200b \u200brefuge\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bshelter.<\/p>\n Inevitably\u200b \u200bman\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bboy\u200b \u200bcollide.\u200b \u200bTheir\u200b \u200bfleeting\u200b \u200bfriendship\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200bpoignant,\u200b \u200bhonest\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bhealing. But\u200b \u200bAbbot’s\u200b \u200bpast\u200b \u200bthreatens\u200b \u200bto\u200b \u200btear\u200b \u200bhim\u200b \u200baway,\u200b \u200bas\u200b \u200bothers\u200b \u200bwatch\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bself-interpret\u200b \u200bwhat they\u200b \u200bsee.<\/p>\n An\u200b \u200bevocative\u200b \u200bportrayal\u200b \u200bof\u200b \u200btwo\u200b \u200boutsiders\u200b \u200bwho\u200b \u200bfind\u200b \u200bcompanionship\u200b \u200bon\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200blonely\u200b \u200bbeach, Lynn\u200b \u200bMichell’s\u200b \u200bnovel\u200b \u200bis\u200b \u200babout\u200b \u200bthe\u200b \u200blabels\u200b \u200bwe\u200b \u200bgive\u200b \u200bpeople\u200b \u200bwho\u200b \u200bare\u200b \u200bdifferent,\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bthe\u200b \u200bharm that\u200b \u200bensues.<\/p>\n Goodreads<\/a> | Amazon<\/a> | Inspired Quill<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Without further ado or much more rambling, I present to you Lynn’s wonderfully written post on writing in different styles!<\/p>\n \u201cWho are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe?\u201d<\/p>\n I see all my writing, in and outside academia, as a story. I\u2019m tuned in to the stories others tell, the stories I tell, the stories I make up. That\u2019s the common denominator. That\u2019s the nut inside the various shells of academic papers and research and writing novels and editing other women\u2019s novels. While each is a different kind of story, almost everything I\u2019ve taken has been shaped and told in terms of a narrative.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another constant. I\u2019m one of those writers who prefers to observe and to hang around on the sidelines watching people rather than throwing myself into the social fray. I watch and store and ponder. I squirrel away facial expressions and body language and the way someone is dressed. The inside of my head is a bit like backstage at some theatre – actors, props, scenery, costumes, dialogue. Thoughts. And feelings.<\/p>\n My first research project as a new lecturer at Keele University found me crawling around the floors of state nursery schools while scribbling on my clipboard watching small children play. I wanted to know how the noisy smorgesbord of toys and games on offer satisfied the needs of very different children and how many enjoyed, learned and gained something from their days. At first glance it looks like chaos but watch carefully and you\u2019ll see confident children negotiating in groups, children who race for the physical activities, ones who cling to adults, and passive children who don\u2019t do much because they don\u2019t seem to know how to play or don\u2019t want to. They remain on the edges and can be overlooked. I told the stories of the children\u2019s days and showed that a minority of children were getting very little out of their experiences. One of several academic papers was called \u2018Doing Six and Being Batman.\u2019 One child\u2019s words.<\/p>\n A lot of my academic work was interview based so I listened to individuals and groups of people, then went away to find the truest, closest way of telling their stories. For Growing Up in Smoke<\/em>, funded by Cancer Research, I listened to children telling me what it was like to live in home where parents smoked and how much they hated the fug and and worried about asthma and about their parents dying. They drew pictures and wrote heart-felt feelings in letters and stories. I searched out the common themes as well as original thoughts and wrote as truthfully as I could about those children\u2019s lives as passive smokers.<\/p>\n I wrote Shattered: Life with ME<\/em> when I was emerging from the ME Ghetto after 15 years of not much of a life. I still didn\u2019t feel well, but I knew I had the skills as a writer to portray this illness accurately, strongly and honestly. I interviewed 30 people of all ages from adolescents to seventy somethings, most of them severely, chronically ill and without diagnosis or treatment because there wasn\u2019t one. The people I met were brave and inspiring and their stories needed to be told. My own health crept up a notch. After I\u2019d typed up dozens of hours of interview material, I put on my academic sociologist\u2019s hat and worked out how to classify the themes to present them without bias as a piece of good qualitative research. While writing the book, I wasn\u2019t firing on all four cylinders and I still needed to rest, but I was the voice of seriously ill people who had not been heard or who had been horribly dismissed as hypochondriacs. It took a long five years but the letters and emails I received afterwards made it utterly worthwhile.<\/p>\n In my novels, I have a heady freedom compared with writing for an academic audience and I\u2019m not hamstrung by conventions. Hidden in my debut novel, White Lies<\/em>, is one almost true story amongst all the fiction, a story found by listening. When the present was growing dim for my elderly widowed father, a soldier most of his life, his periods of active service burned ever brighter. in his memory. I was regaled with his stories of being a Desert Rat in Libya in WWII and his time chasing the Mao Mao in the bloody uprising against colonial rule in Nairobi In the1950s. I knew his anecdotes off by heart. As a coping strategy, I told him to dictate his memoirs and so began long, regular meetings with me at the laptop and him talking and sipping coffee. More and more emerged. His perfect recall, and in particular his white colonial view of the Mao Mao brutality, was the start of that first novel. Yes, he is David, the soldier who cannot see the other story, that of the tribes disposed of their land and their way of life.<\/p>\n In The Red Beach Hut<\/em> I\u2019ve veered well away from stories of my own or those of people I know. If there are any vestiges, they\u2019ve undergone so much transformation that their roots are hidden even from me. I can rationalise why I wrote that novel at the time of the 2015 General Election but that doesn\u2019t reflect the experience. The characters of Abbott and Nevile arrived ready made and I tuned in to their conversations. Their stories about why they were on a beach at the faded end of the season came next. Unlike previous novels, it took three months of manic writing and that draft wasn\u2019t significantly changed.<\/p>\n We all tell ourselves the stories we need to hear. We sanitise and exaggerate and add rose-coloured highlights. We writers collect those stories and spin them into yarns.<\/p>\n \u2018We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live en<\/em>tirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience<\/em>.\u201d Joan Didion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So fascinating to learn about authors’ writing processes and how the same person can approach their various stories in different styles! Thank you so much for such an articulate post, Lynn.<\/p>\n Don’t forget to check The Red Beach Hut<\/em> and Lynn’s other novels out!<\/p>\n I\u200b \u200bwrite,\u200b \u200bhave\u200b \u200balways\u200b \u200bwritten,\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bI\u200b \u200brun\u200b \u200b\u200bLinen\u200b \u200bPress\u200b,\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bsmall\u200b \u200bindie\u200b \u200bpress\u200b \u200bfor\u200b \u200bwomen writers.\u200b \u200bIt\u2019s\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bfine\u200b \u200bbalancing\u200b \u200bact\u200b \u200bbut\u200b \u200bever\u200b \u200bsince\u200b \u200bI\u200b \u200bwatched\u200b \u200b\u200bElvira\u200b \u200bMadigan\u200b,\u200b \u200bI\u2019ve\u200b \u200bsecretly wanted\u200b \u200bto\u200b \u200bbe\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200btight\u200b \u200brope\u200b \u200bwalker.<\/p>\n My\u200b \u200bfourteen\u200b \u200bbooks\u200b \u200bare\u200b \u200bpublished\u200b \u200bby\u200b \u200bHarperCollins,\u200b \u200bLongman\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bThe\u200b \u200bWomen\u2019s\u200b \u200bPress and\u200b \u200binclude\u200b \u200ban\u200b \u200billustrated\u200b \u200bwriting\u200b \u200bscheme\u200b \u200bfor\u200b \u200bschools,\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200b\u200bShattered<\/em>\u200b,\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bbook\u200b \u200babout\u200b \u200bliving with\u200b \u200bME.\u200b \u200bThose\u200b \u200bclosest\u200b \u200bto\u200b \u200bmy\u200b \u200bheart\u200b \u200bare\u200b \u200bfiction:\u200b \u200b\u200bLetters\u200b \u200bTo\u200b \u200bMy\u200b \u200bSemi-Detached\u200b \u200bSon<\/em>,\u200b \u200b\u200bmy debut\u200b \u200bnovel\u200b \u200bset\u200b \u200bin\u200b \u200bKenya,\u200b \u200b\u200bWhite\u200b \u200bLies<\/em>\u200b \u200b\u200band\u200b \u200bmy\u200b \u200blatest\u200b \u200bnovel\u200b\u200b \u200bThe\u200b \u200bRed\u200b \u200bBeach\u200b \u200bHut<\/em>\u200b.<\/p>\n When\u200b \u200bnot\u200b \u200bwriting\u200b \u200bor\u200b \u200bediting,\u200b \u200byou\u2019ll\u200b \u200bfind\u200b \u200bme\u200b \u200bbuilding\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bhouse\u200b \u200band\u200b \u200bcreating\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200blandscape\u200b \u200bout of\u200b \u200brocks\u200b \u200bin\u200b \u200ban\u200b \u200boak\u200b \u200bclearing\u200b \u200bhigh\u200b \u200babove\u200b \u200ba\u200b \u200bsmall\u200b \u200bvillage\u200b \u200bin\u200b \u200bsouthern\u200b \u200bFrance.\u200b \u200bHands\u200b \u200bon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"35329869\"](\"http:\/\/araopenpages.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/35329869.jpg\")
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The Red Beach Hut<\/em>
\nby Lynn Michell<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n\n
Writing in different styles<\/em><\/h3>\n
Lynn Michell<\/h4>\n
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About the Author :-<\/h4>\n
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