Category: gods of gold

So, About That Play…

On By chrisnickson2In annabelle harper, gods of gold, leeds, skin like silver, two bronze pennies, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Some of you (hopefully all of you) know that I have a play on soon. It’s called The Empress on the Corner, and it’s Annabelle Harper’s story. Yes, that Annabelle from Gods of Gold, Two Bronze Pennies, and Skin Like Silver. If you don’t know about the play, you can find out here – it’s on June 4 as part of Leeds Big Bookend festival, with Carolyn Eden as Annabelle.

We’re presenting part of it: a couple of scenes live, script-in-hand (you won’t even notice the script), one as an audio play, and one on video. It allows the audience to see the possibilities of the production. Each scene will be put in context, and you’ll come away feeling you know Annabelle.

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On Friday we recorded the audio section. Then, on Saturday, thanks to the people at Abbey House Museum and Bob Jordan of Obverse Films, we recorded the video.

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Magical? Absolutely. In costume, with the hair and makeup just so, it was Annabelle speaking. Once the video is edited it’ll be on YouTube, of course, as a teaser for the play or for the many things it might become in time.

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It’s Annabelle’s World…

On By chrisnickson2In annabelle harper, gods of gold, leeds, skin like silver, tom harper, two bronze pennies, UncategorizedLeave a comment

…but she’d like you to come and visit.

A few years ago (Four? Five?) I was looking at one of my favourite paintings, Reflections On The Aire: On Strike, 1879, by Leeds artist Atkinson Grimshaw and a story came to me, fully formed, out of the ether.

That was my introduction to Annabelle. Annabelle Atkinson, she was then, sitting and looking at the picture with me, telling me how it came about that she was in it, looking back a decade to that days she stood on the banks of the river to be sketched.

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We met again when I settled down to write Gods of Gold, set during the Leeds Gas Strike of 1890. She was Annabelle Harper then, freshly married, flushed with happiness but with her feet firmly planted on the ground. With a flourish of her silk gown as she sat, she pushed me over on the chair.

‘I was there, luv,’ she told me. ‘I saw it all happen. Come on, I’ll tell you about it.’

Since then, we’ve spent quite a lot of time together. She’s in three of my published novels – Gods of Gold, Two Bronze Pennies, and Skin Like Silver. The fourth, The Iron Water, comes out in July, and I’m working on the fifth. I’ve shared the way Annabelle has blossomed. She’s the emotional centre of the novels in so many ways. She’s become a canny, successful businesswoman and a member of the Leeds Women’s Suffrage Society – and one of its speakers.

It was one of her Suffragist speeches, brought to breathing, passionate life by Carolyn Eden at the launch of Skin Like Silver, that was the catalyst for the play The Empress on the Corner.

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‘That’s her,’ Annabelle told me the day after the launch. ‘She’s the one to be me. Now, you, you’d better start telling my story. Are you listening? I’ll begin.’

I didn’t have a choice – when you have someone like Annabelle, she dictates what will happen. And so I wrote her story. Or perhaps I simply wrote down what she dictated.

The presentation is still a work in progress, and it will be sections of the complete play, not the entire thing. But it’s the story of growing up in a poor Irish family on the Bank in Leeds in the mid 1800s. Of having two choices in life, mills or maids. Of luck, of taking the chance to use her good mind. Of understanding that there’s more, that she can raise her voice for others.

It’s a Leeds story. It’s a political story. It’s a love story. But above everything, it’s Annabelle’s story.

And she reckons you need to come and see it. Believe me, I’ve learnt, you don’t argue with Annabelle, she’ll win in the end.

So you’d better go here to buy your ticket and we’ll see you on June 4, 2.30 pm at Leeds Central Library. It’s part of the wonderful Leeds Big Bookend festival.

Annabelle has her ticket. She’ll be on the side of the front row, with a big grin on her face, pleased as punch. Say hello to her after they play.

The Play’s The Thing

On By chrisnickson2In annabelle harper, gods of gold, leeds, skin like silver, tom harper, two bronze pennies, Uncategorized1 Comment

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Book your ticket here.

Last year, at the launch of the third Tom Harper novel, Skin Like Silver, an actor named Carolyn Eden became Annabelle Harper, giving a speech of suffragism that Annabelle delivers in the book.

She inhabited the character and brought to life a woman who’s lived in my head for a few years now. I’ve tried to tell Annabelle’s story in fiction, but suddenly I saw another way. A play. A one-woman play.

The process of rehearsals has tentatively begun with a read-through and we’ll be moving ahead. The good people at Leeds Big Bookend will be giving us a chance to show some of it on June 4 at 2.30 pm in Leeds Central Library. It’s a work in progress, an exclusive preview. You’ll have a chance to see where it’s going, to become part of Annabelle’s story.

Made in Leeds TV have plans to film Annabelle’s story at historic locations around Leeds and she seems to be drawn to radio too. There’s no substitute for the live experience, but you might be treated to a sharing of more than the stage version as the project develops.

It’s a picture of working-class Leeds in the 19th century, from the grinding poverty of the Bank to relative prosperity as the landlady of the Victoria public house in Sheepscar, and her awakening to the world, to feminism and politics. It’s a story for all of today, as much for today as more than a century ago.

The pleasure and love along with pain. And hope. Because every story needs outrageous hope. Tickets are now on sale, and it will be worth your while. Annabelle will be very much alive in front of you.

You can find out more and book your tickets here.

You need to come.

That’s Somethin’ Else

On By chrisnickson2In dark briggate blues, gods of gold, leeds, the broken token, two bronze pennies, waterstones4 Comments

A little less than five years has passed since Creme de la Crime took a chance on me and published the first Richard Nottingham book, The Broken Token. Someone believe in my writing enough to put an entire novel in print and get it out there. It’s impossible to describe how it felt at the launch in May 2010. Proud doesn’t come close. My only regret was that my parents weren’t alive to see it.

Now, in little less than a month I have another new book out, and there have been a fair few in between. Since I was given that first opportunity, I grasped it hard, and I’m immensely grateful that people what to publish and to read what I write.

I write every day. Every single day of the year. It’s what I do. I’m many things, as we all are, but writer is very close to the top, if not right at the peak. I love to write. It’s a pleasure. It’s an honour. I still do a fair bit of writing about music, my avocation, but the focus is on the novels.

Overnight success is rarely that. Writing is a craft to be mastered, and that takes time. We never master it, not really. We just keep trying. I know I am. I attempt new things. Some work, some don’t. And I keep trying to gain readers, one by one, and hang on to those who like my work.

Bit by bit, I try to move ahead. I’ll never be a bestseller. I’ll never win the Nobel Prize for Literature (my hope when I was in my teen and foolish). I’ve found what I do and it took long enough. But the movement is there and in the last 12 months it seems to have been a giant stride, first with Gods of Gold, then with Dark Briggate Blues. Lovely reviews, press coverage, plenty of people at the launches and events I’ve done. That’s incredibly heartening.

Both books are up for the CWA Historical Dagger. I may win, I may not – there are plenty of betters writers out there. Dark Briggate Blues is up for a Regional Read.

I’m lucky, I have publishers who believe in me. I’m not lost somewhere in the mid-list of some publishing giant. I can phone the publishers I deal with and talk to them. They do all they can to push the books with excellent publicists. I’m proud of everything I’ve put out. I’ve made many wonderful friends and had their support and had the chance to know and befriend writers who’ve influenced me. That’s pretty amazing to me.

But today, today felt like a quantum leap. I had to go into Waterstones in Leeds – the local branch of a national chain where I held the launch for Dark Briggate Blues and recently did a signing. My books weren’t on the shelf. No, the manager told me, and showed me. One is displayed on a table. And then he showed me something else. My books have their own table in the crime section, because they’re selling so well. Only two of them at present, because the third they stock is currently sold out. And they’ll be getting in the hardback of Two Bronze Pennies when it’s published.

I was amazed. In fact, I walked out without taking a picture of it. A few steps before I realised my stupidity and walked back in. Success isn’t a fortune in money. This is what it looks like. And thank you all.

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