Anna Vaught, "All the Days I Did Not Live"

 

Dr Anna Vaught is an English and Creative Writing teacher and mentor, occasional lecturer, campaigner - and prolific author. Find her everywhere on social media as "Bookwormvaught." Links and further information here. 

About All the Days I Did Not Live, by Anna Vaught
After the death of her steady, constraining husband, Catherine discovers that grief can be a liberation. With her adult children appalled by her sudden transformations, and a strangely familiar presence in the house urging her on, she begins to test the boundaries of who she might become. A call arrives on her newly purchased phone – a widower, Alec, still dialling the number once owned by his dead wife. What follows is a transgressive, intoxicating relationship built on longing, lies and the hunger to feel alive. All the Days I Did Not Live is a haunting exploration of loneliness, taboo and the dangerous, but delicious, magic of reinvention – where freedom comes at a cost and even the ghosts refuse to stay quiet …

You can read more about All the Days I Did Not Live on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the novella. 

From All the Days I Did Not Live

1.

Yesterday I dreamed of that taste again. I dreamed of a deferential early summer. A kind breeze. I had taken the unripe and forbidden pear from the grass in the orchard. For a few moments, I sat cradling it as he watched. He had a camera and a scowl. In my dream, as on that hot day in the orchard, I lifted my chin and scowled back: it was the first time. Then I held the pear up, while his eyes said Do not dare; I held it up still further, before plunging it down to my mouth, biting into it lasciviously, though indeed it was unripe. 

As I said, it was the first time – the first time I had defied him – and in many dreams through my girlhood and all the way to middle age, and now, that dream comes back. I remember the sweet scratch of summer grass, wet, ardent on my bare feet. I am a teenage girl, shoulders back, the tart juice dripping down my chin. It is slightly obscene, and that is how I meant it. He does not move, and I think now, I can do anything. I feel, in defiance, that I am fully alive.

To this day a pear must be unripe, but yielding enough, and there must be juice, not only moisture. I must catch it at the right moment, if I can.

Yesterday I dreamed of that taste again. Of that time. Of my one invincible summer.

I dreamed at night, and then again when I awoke. Before I went to sleep, I thought I heard a drumming sound. I am used to that sound, I said to myself. Stress, anxiety: the blood pulsing and whooshing in your ears, then an irritation of tap, tap in your head, pinprick in your eye and a band snapping at your temples. 

But you see, I was wrong about that. And right before I drifted, with thoughts of that pear, the drumming sound was in the walls and under my bed. 

I am alive. I am fully alive.

Anna Vaught, "The Alchemy: A Guide to Gentle Productivity for Writers"

 

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, mentor and author of several books, including 2020’s novel Saving Lucia and short fiction collection, Famished; 2023 saw Saving Lucia published to national acclaim in Italy as Bang Bang Mussolini, memoir These Envoys of Beauty, the magical realism novel The Zebra and Lord Jones and, after The Alchemy, the Curae anthology of short prose from the winning entrants to the prize she established in 2023 for writer-carers; next year sees her first essay collection, To Melt the Stars. Her shorter and multi-genre works are widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies. Until recently, she was a columnist for Mslexia and has written regularly for The Bookseller, including as a columnist. With a background in secondary English, mentoring with young people and community arts, Anna is now a guest university lecturer, tutor for Jericho Writers and teaches occasionally at secondary level. She works alongside chronic illness, and is a passionate campaigner for mental health provision and SEND support for young people. She is a PhD candidate at York St John from December 2023-4, undertaking a PhD by Published Works on Magical Realism and Trauma, foregrounding her own work. Her title begins with a quotation from her memoir: "Go there on a wing in your imagination": Magical Realism and Imagination as Therapeutic Writing in Saving Lucia and These Envoys of Beauty. 

About The Alchemy

The Alchemy is a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing look like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go.

Full of practical advice, strategies, comfort and the occasional entertaining essay, The Alchemy is about writing a book when you thought you could not. It is for all writers, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence, and those who face significant challenges – perhaps you are chronically ill or care for a loved one. It is a book for beginners, but it is also for those of you who are stuck in your habits and practice – perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day to day with the book you wanted to write. That’s what The Alchemy is. Let’s do this together.

You can read more about The Alchemy on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short extract from the introduction to the book. 

From The Alchemy, by Anna Vaught

Welcome

The Alchemy is about writing a book – a work of fiction of whatever kind – when you thought you could not. This is a book for everyone, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence; those who are disabled, chronically ill or perhaps care for a loved one who would struggle without them. Essentially, this has been me for some time now, and that is how I know about productivity – and how I know about challenging what it is; how we think of and understand productivity in terms of a creative project.

I thrived not only from deadlines, spreadsheets and flow charts (although these things are excellent), but from learning to work with what I had, when I could and, also, in understanding that writing a book happens all the time. Much of what can become a book, or deepen what you already have, might be found in being observant in your daily life – insofar as you can be, because I want to exclude no one here. Not everyone will be active.

I want to free you from the idea that you must write every day to be a writer, or even if you want to complete a full-length book. If that works for you, wonderful, but it won’t work for everyone, and won’t be possible for many. So I try to get us to think about the creation of a book in different terms: in observations, but also in knowing that thinking is also a huge part of the job. Give yourself unhurried time in which to do this.

In laying all this out, I am going to offer you various essays full of ideas and first-hand experiences, and I will suggest writing exercises as I go. Finally, I am going to offer thoughts on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go. This is a book for beginners, but it might also be for you if you are stuck in your habits and practice; perhaps you are newly unwell or constrained in some way, or perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day-to-day with the book you want to write.

Anna Vaught, "The Zebra and Lord Jones"

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, Creative Writing teacher, mentor, editor and author of several books, including Saving Lucia, Famished, Ravished and These Envoys of Beauty. Her short creative works and features have been widely published, and she has written for the national press and has had a column with The Bookseller and Mslexia. In 2022 Anna launched The Curae, a new literary prize for carers. Anna is also a guest university lecturer, a tutor for Jericho Writers, and volunteers with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. She is the mother of three sons, comes from a large Welsh family and lives in Wiltshire. The Zebra and Lord Jones is her third novel and seventh book.

About The Zebra and Lord Jones

A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras. 

The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.

You can read more about The Zebra and Lord Jones on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From The Zebra and Lord Jones, by Anna Vaught

It is the autumn of 1940 and the staff of the London Zoo have been hard at work on the preparations for keeping the animals safe. Soon, the Blitz will begin. All the venomous creatures have already been destroyed in case of their escape, or perhaps to prevent their falling into the wrong hands; as in other menageries, the seals have been sequestered for submarine-detection training; in food shortages, some of the smallest creatures have been fed to the biggest and hungriest. Londoners have taken to the animal-adoption scheme to help keep the creatures in food and bedding; some of the tiniest are boarding with families, with the dormice shoeboxed out. It is some miniscule recompense for owners of the 750,000 pets put down when war broke out. But then, late one September night, the zebra enclosure suffers a direct hit, and Mother the zebra and her foal Sweetie escape and outrun the keepers. This is a true story, and is recounted in the journals of Dr Sidney Huxtable, eminent zoologist and director of the zoo, who gave directions that night for the seal pond to be drained in order to provide more water for the firefighters. 

Also in the city that night – as the zebra and her foal ran amidst the flames and rubble, through a tableau of extraordinary suffering – was Lord Robert Ashburn, Baron Jesmond (to be known to you as ‘Lord Jones’, for which read on), attending to his family’s property in Mayfair and Knightsbridge (a little late, as ever) and accounting for insurance expectations in the event of destruction by Hitler, about which the family had serious concerns (in terms of guarding bricks and mortar) ... 

Anna Vaught, "These Envoys of Beauty"

 

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, mentor and author of several books, including 2020’s novel Saving Lucia and short fiction collection, Famished. Her shorter and multi-genre works are widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies. She is currently a columnist for Mslexia and has written regularly for The Bookseller, including as a columnist. Anna’s second short fiction collection, Ravished, was published by Reflex Press in 2022, and 2023 will see five books: memoir, These Envoys of Beauty (Reflex Press), new novel The Zebra and Lord Jones, plus The Alchemy, Anna’s first book about writing (both Renard Press, UK and Commonwealth). Saving Lucia will be published in Italian by Milan’s 8tto Edizioni as Bang Bang Mussolini. Anna is a guest university lecturer, tutor for Jericho Writers, volunteer with young people and has recently established the new Curae prize for writer-carers, with industry-wide support, and the editor of Curae: An Anthology from the Inaugural Prize (Renard Press). She works alongside chronic illness, is a passionate campaigner for mental health provision, including in the publishing industry, and she is represented by Kate Johnson of Wolf Literary, NYC. Anna has just finished a collection of essays and is working on a new novel, while two of her books are on US submission. Her website is here. 

About These Envoys of Beauty: A Memoir

In These Envoys of Beauty, Anna Vaught explores her relationship with the natural world, how it fed and feeds her imagination, and how it gave her hope of something different beyond the world she experienced as a child and young person. She writes about how she oriented herself to the natural world and lived within it while growing up in a rural home; about wishing trees, talking streams, and her early knowledge of plants, animals, and botanical names; about her passionate relationship, even when very young, with foraging and what was edible, how things smelled, licking the rain from leaves, drinking, growing, and cooking.

Over twelve essays, Vaught uses her relationship with the natural world to explore themes of loneliness, depression, and complex and sustained trauma within the family home, issues that shaped her early life and continue to have a far-reaching impact decades later. The text is both a detailed natural history and a complex mental health chronicle, with an exploration of intergenerational trauma; it is both personal history and a scholarly work. These Envoys of Beauty is frank in its treatment of difficult issues but offers many hopeful suggestions and ideas. 

You can read more about These Envoys of Beauty on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the memoir. 

From These Envoys of Beauty, by Anna Vaught

. 

‘On Depression: Flood and Mud’ 

If ever I felt desperate as a child and teenager, I would run and run and go to one of the two weirs close to our house and hear the rushing anger of the water, the gorgeous curve of it and the pound. I was comforted and grounded by the sense of danger. That done, I would wade into the river Frome from one of the little mud beaches I loved so much, hopping through the holes the cows had made when coming down to drink. I would feel the slap of water weeds around my calves, then thighs too, and sometimes I would press myself against the bank, pushing my arms hard back behind me, grabbing on roots, too deep, not steady, but enthralled by the water and its rapid movement. 

On it went. It didn’t see me or care for me and that it could kill me without even knowing was a comfort: it made sense of how very tiny I was, and that, for some reason, made me feel safe. The roar of the weir was at my back, supernatural, and its volume made my anxiety and my cry small too. 

I would go home, wet, calmer, and slope to my room, or sometimes curl into a ball in my den in the creepers. I remember being in year nine in secondary school and feeling a sense of separation and my oddity. I was certain that no other fourteen-year-old in school curled themselves into a ball in a creeper den and wished themselves away. I was certain that no one else would have understood the weirdo pressed into the riverbank. What you do not know until you grow up a bit more is that the world is full of weirdos like you: water lovers, chuggers in the mud, wailers in the fields where the cows have been. That is an encouraging thought ...

Anna Vaught, "Red Flags and Green Flags in Publishing"

By Anna Vaught

Having spoken to all the wonderful MA Creative Writing students at Leicester the other week, I thought I would answer a question here that folks were keen to ask, in case my answers are helpful or interesting to anyone contemplating publication, or wondering about the route they are already on. 

So my fifth book is just going out on submission and I am editing my sixth and seventh. I know the indie presses but I am agented for future work. Thus, I've a range of experience. I was asked what, for me, were red or green flags when you are offered publication by an indie press or representation by an agent. This is what I said based on my experience and working closely with others. As you can probably tell, many different things happen to people! So here we go with the red flags:

1. When there’s no dialogue offered or you try to open up dialogue and find it’s not possible, it ought to be a warning sign, because you have to be able to understand what is happening. I had a publication date change three times without my being told. That sort of thing. You shouldn't have to go through this.

2. If you can’t get answers to key questions, then that's a red flag - questions that seem key to you, that is. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about schedule, publicity and so on. This is art, but it is also commerce.  

3. Do some looking about. Do you see that there’s little parity (in terms of exposure) between the publisher's or agent's authors / clients when you look at social media feed and elsewhere? Of course it won’t be totally consistent and I don’t see how it can be, but probe and research if some authors are invisible.  

4. If it is a small press, check that at least some of their back catalogue is available. If it is not, try to find out why. Because at some point you will be back catalogue. If you are published and then forgotten about, that would be sad. Also, it should give you pause.

5. Oh - this might be contentious, but I think referring to a business relationship in terms of your being part of a cohort or a family can be problematic because, while you’re united by your love of books, it suggests a blurring of lines somewhere ... and that might not be to your advantage in terms of commerce, because the connection has become too emotional. Also, it might be a highway to exploitative behaviour. 

6. If the person or publisher you've been offered a contract with is frequently and vocally critical of other parts of the publishing industry - say on Twitter - I think that's a warning light. I DO NOT mean those great folk aiming to improve diversity and make sure all voices are heard; I mean those who criticise agents, big publishers, other publishers. It may mean fewer options and choices for you as a writer because some avenues are closed off. 

7. With an agent or a publisher, make sure there is a good contract and that it is explained to you. If it isn't or any concerns are waved away, I'd be very wary. Also, on this topic, get any contract vetted by The Society of Authors and also let me pass on that it is my understanding that, unless you get a multi-book deal, an insistence from a publisher that they have first dibs on your second book with them is not as clear cut as some writers have believed - even if it is in your contract. You have the right to negotiate here and that includes not publishing the book. 

... Green flags? Everything that's the opposite of all this! 

About the author
Anna Vaught is a novelist, poet, essayist, short fiction writer, editor and a secondary English teacher, tutor and mentor, mental health advocate and mum of 3. 2020 saw the publication of Anna's third novel, Saving Lucia (Bluemoose), which has been longlisted for the Barbellion Prize, and a first short story collection, Famished (Influx). Anglo-Welsh, she splits her time between Wiltshire, Wales, and the Southern US. She is currently finishing a new novel and working on some non-fiction, while a further novel and second short story collection are on the desk. Anna’s essays, reviews, articles, and features have been featured widely online and in print. She is represented by Kate Johnson of Mackenzie Wolf Literary Agents, in New York City. Her website is here. She is also on Twitter @BookwormVaught and Instagram @bookwormvaught6. 

Anna gave a masterclass at the University of Leicester as part of the MA in Creative Writing in March 2021. You can read about her novel Saving Lucia on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Anna Vaught, "Saving Lucia"

Anna Vaught is a novelist, poet, essayist, short fiction writer, editor and a secondary English teacher, tutor and mentor, mental health advocate and mum of 3. 2020 saw the publication of Anna's third novel, Saving Lucia (Bluemoose), which has just been longlisted for the Barbellion Prize, and a first short story collection, Famished (Influx). Anglo-Welsh, she splits her time between Wiltshire, Wales, and the Southern US. She is currently finishing a new novel and working on some non-fiction, while a further novel and second short story collection are on the desk. Anna’s essays, reviews, articles, and features have been featured widely online and in print. She is represented by Kate Johnson of Mackenzie Wolf Literary Agents, in New York City. Her website is here. She is also on Twitter @BookwormVaught and Instagram @bookwormvaught6. 

Anna Vaught will be giving a guest talk and masterclass as part of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester on Wednesday 3 March 2021. If you are interested in attending, please email Jonathan Taylor (jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk). 

About Saving Lucia

How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini? What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce's daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as 'Anna O,' and finally 19th Century Paris's Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann? That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.

Saving Lucia explores the last days of the life of the Hon Violet Gibson, would-be assassin of Mussolini. In St Andrew’s Hospital, her lifetime co-patient is Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce, and Lucia helps Violet to organise one last and extraordinary adventure, together with two other well-known psychiatric patients, and in the process secure freedom and understanding for herself. Saving Lucia is historical fiction with strong fantastical elements woven in - the journey undertaken is itself a work of prodigious fantasy - plus refrains and rhythms from the works of James Joyce, particularly Finnegans Wake. It is a testimony to the role of the imagination in mental illness and in confinement and its stimulus was the long and difficult experience of its author, who saw these women not as cases, but as heroines. 

Below, you can read the opening page of the novel. 

From Saving Lucia

Violet Albina Gibson, the Honourable, was behind bars, wearing an immaculate black crepe dress, clasping her finest manners and a lovely, lacquered fountain pen, for letters to Churchill and others. She was a criminal because, in April 1926, in Rome, she shot Mussolini. And she was insane with it; an assassin with devotions, prayers and visions. Not a steady-handed murderer, but one that broke apart most untidily and could not be trusted. In prison, in Rome, she threw a chamber pot at her guard and a flower press at a crackbrain; for an Honourable lady, such rude things she said. Then there were the screams and intransigence: strange mystical tantrums. And in 1927, when they put her in the mental hospital, in England, behind those necessary bars, through which you saw a fine vista—oh and the borders were lovely this year! —she would never do a jigsaw or embroidery, when instructed for her own good. Only towards the end of her life would she do one thing they suggested: she agreed to stand outside with the birds and encourage them to feed from her hands. 

Other than that, a hopeless obdurate virago, a strange dotty old girl, mad with religion. And a danger. Or a nuisance. Or both.