Roger Spottiswoode attached to direct feature film HYPERBARIC, written by Dominic Morgan and Matt Harvey

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Roger Spottiswoode (Tomorrow Never Dies, Shake Hands with the Devil, Turner and Hooch) will direct Dominic Morgan and Matt Harvey’s film script HYPERBARIC. Rick Benattar and Nigel Thomas are producing the film for Mythic Entertainment and Matador Productions.

HYPERBARIC is a psychological thriller set on a ‘narco-submarine’, the crudely assembled vessels notoriously used by South American drug dealers to ferry narcotics without attracting the attention of the coast guard. The tense chamber piece follows four strangers, all with their own dark pasts, as they are forced to work together aboard a rickety submarine to smuggle a hugely valuable cargo of cocaine into the US.

HYPERBARIC is the third Morgan and Harvey screenplay to be set up in the last year, following THE BRIDGE (in development with Paradox, Simon West attached to direct) and THE CONTROLLER (Winkler Films and the Solution, with James McTeague attached to direct).

Roger Spottiswoode’s latest film, MIDNIGHT SUN, a family adventure about a boy’s friendship with a polar bear cub, will be released later this year.

Lyndall Gordon’s DIVIDED LIVES out today

Lyndall Gordon’s richly-layered memoir DIVIDED LIVES: DREAMS OF A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER is published by Virago on 19 June. The award-winning biographer turns her insightful writer’s eye to her own life and her relationship to her mother – an extraordinary and intensely realised tale of loyalty and division; breakdown and recovery; migration and home.

The book has already received excellent reviews, with Susie Orbach in the Observer calling Lyndall ‘a biographer with soul, she reaches into the hearts of those she brings alive for us’.

There are  several chances for readers to catch her around the UK talking about the book in coming months.

On 9 July, Lyndall will be at the Telegraph Way With Words Festival at Dartington Hall. She will be talking about Mothers and Daughters, in the Barn at 5pm. Tickets cost £5 and can be booked online.

On 26 July, she  is reading at the Women Writers’ Salon with Maggie Gee, author of VIRGINIA WOOLF IN MANHATTAN, at the Upper Wimpole Street Literary Salon. The event starts at 7 with readings beginning at 7:30. 

Later this year, Lyndall will be appearing at Ilkley literary festival, among others.

Lyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors. Lyndall was her carer, her “secret sharer”, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. Moving and beautiful, DIVIDED LIVES is a poetic memoir about the pain and joy of being a daughter, that is also an intriguing social history and feminist text, rich in literary reference.

Lyndall Gordon's earlier memoir SHARED LIVES, about her group of young friends growing to womanhood in 1950s Cape Town, is now also available in ebook for the first time.

Visit Lyndall's Website

 Praise for Lyndall Gordon:

'An inspired and unconventional biographer' - Independent on Sunday

 'Gordon is one of the best biographers writing today.' - -  Catherine Hollis, Sacramento Book Review

 'Lyndall Gordon is known for the thoroughness of her research and meticulous attention to detail… a fine researcher's eye… an exceptional and unusual mind.' - -  Janet van Eeden, The Witness

 Praise for DIVIDED LIVES

 ‘A wonderful – and at times painful – memoir about the expectations of love and duty between mother and daughter.’ – The Bookseller, Editor’s Picks

 ‘Daughterhood, as Lyndall Gordon demonstrates in her intense and semi-poetic family memoir, is a complex and demanding role. In prose both lyrical and meticulous, Gordon describes a relationship … from which no woman is exempt. A disturbing and often beautiful book that confronts heritage, selfishness, infidelity and obsessive secrecy, and which explores and ultimately celebrates the lifelong emotional seesaw between parent and child.’  – Juliet Nicolson, Evening Standard

 ‘A biographer with soul, she reaches into the hearts of those she brings alive for us. She makes the meaning of their lives sing and sweat as she invites us into their experiences, their longings, their struggles and their disappointments. In preparation, she has learnt the anguish and the heartbeat of another, the other, her mother, Rhoda, whose presence rules the pages of this memoir. …In this fascinating mix between memoir and biography, we see the struggle of a daughter, to keep an attachment with her mother that is both close and yet boundaried, separate and connected, an attachment in which each can live their dreams.’ – Susie Orbach, The Observer

Team Stockwin and The Silk Tree

Julian Stockwin is the author of the Kydd Naval series and his latest novel, THE SILK TREE, will be published in late 2014 by Allison & Busby and is now available for preorder here. Julian's partner, Kathy, has become an integral part of the writing process. Below, the author explains the creative development behind THE SILK TREE, where planning and research are the essential ingredients for a compelling story and great writing. 

Team Stockwin!

Team Stockwin!

THE SILK TREE is a new departure for me, a stand-alone historical adventure fiction that is not maritime at its heart.  Its genesis was my wife Kathy’s discovery of a rather lovely silk scarf in the ancient Kapali Carsi, the Grand Bazaar, in Istanbul during a recent research trip to Turkey.  While she was chatting with the merchant I idly wondered just how silk had been brought from China to the West. Intrigued, I did some research and the creative juices started flowing – I knew I had a story I had to tell.

So we got to work, drafting up a list of topics to investigate; a very pleasant task over a meze of various delicious morsels – then on to kepab – all in the name of research, of course...

As usual, local museums and libraries were a major resource. I always travel with a small pocket dictaphone and a compact camera that can take high-quality images of textual material. At the end of the day it’s our strict rule to go through the photos and notate each one. I also transcribe the notes I took verbally and Kathy and I work up any changes to our itinerary as a result of the day’s research.

Of all the iconic architecture in modern Istanbul, Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace are the most memorable.  At the time of THE SILK TREE the former was a Christian shrine but Topkapi was yet to be built. Part of the task of a writer of historical fiction is to recreate city landscapes of the past in his mind’s eye and for THE SILK TREE this meant  sixth century Constantinople (as it was called then).

Back in the UK Kathy and I flow-charted the basic story on a large white board that we find invaluable at this stage.  Then we had a number of sessions working up the personalities of the main characters, Nicander and Marius. Once this was done we developed sub-plots around the main story – the quest for the secret of silk. Kathy thought we should have a love story element in the book and we had to find a way to bring two people of very different cultures to mutual respect then a deep attraction. But I don’t want to give the game away as to how this happened...

I’m a firm believer in the old saying that no life experience is wasted for the writer and for THE SILK TREE I was able to call upon my admiration of Chinese calligraphy which goes back to the time I lived and worked in the Far East. And all those hours of dry study of ancient Greek and Latin at grammar school came in handy, too!

When we were satisfied with our planning for THE SILK TREE a detailed synopsis was created, and I wrote the first three chapters, which I sent off to Carole Blake. She loved the idea and I then set out to write the rest of the book.

Kathy is a very integral part of my writing process. Once we have agreed on a strong beginning and a satisfying end, along with the thrust of the middle of the book, we walk and talk segments, making sure the right elements of tension, stakes, detail etc. are there before I write.

Kathy is also my live-in ‘blue pencil’, fine-tuning my writing with her very considerable editing skills as I go along. At the end of the process she does what she calls her helicopter editing, looking at the work as a whole.  Then we both go through the manuscript very, very carefully a number of times before it’s ready to submit.

I realise I am very privileged to be able to earn my living as a full-time writer – and to be able to work so closely with my life partner in this is a wonderful thing indeed!

The Anatolian Plateau, the last stage for the great camel caravans of the Silk Road.

The Anatolian Plateau, the last stage for the great camel caravans of the Silk Road.

Hagia Sophia at dusk

Hagia Sophia at dusk