Abigail Tarttelin

Website Re-Development Announced

July 15th, 2010

To let everyone know…

the reason why my last post was so diddy (yes it’s a word) was because we are currently hashing out a new website design that will feature a re-jigged blog, a new, slick design, information on specific films and more video clips. Cause we’re all about the video.

Information on the new website will include updates on THREE STAGS, TAXI RIDER (didn’t know about that one did you? Well you do now - check it out on Imdb and watch this space for screenings), FLICK updates including a LITERARY DEATH MATCH appearance in August and the soon to be released cover!!! and much, MUCH more.

So stick around - our aim is to be live by the end of the summer (HA so we have flexibility if it stays hot) and there’s going to be much to see and learn and read and…watch…and look…and other regarding type words.

See you then,

Abigail X



Abigail Shoots For Feature Film THREE STAGS

July 15th, 2010

Does exactly what it says on the tin folks…

In June I shot as Stacy, one of two love interests of the leading fella in Mark Locke’s new comedy THREE STAGS. Mark’s first feature CRUST starred Kevin ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ McNally and was a surreal comedy about a dude that spends his life savings on a giant boxing shrimp and then falls in love with it. Awesome.

I shot on the edge of a gorge and in a paintballing park. It was suh-weet and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product.



Fanfarlo Music Video “Fire Escape”

June 12th, 2010

usc3Hey all, the new Fanfarlo vid is up and they’re a very good band and I would recommend them very much. Also I happen to be in the video, just a little one day jobby back in May(ish). Look to the happy version (above) for more little bits of my face if that turns you on. In any case - watch it. I like it/them.
Justin used to work in a bookstore. Kudos.
http://www.fanfarlo.com/home



London, 25th May: First Live Reading of FLICK

May 12th, 2010

That’s right, I’ll be reading an extract from Flick at a prose night in East London.

The night is organised by Declan Ryan and I will be reading an extract from the beginning of Flick, my first novel, bought last month and due to be published by Beautiful Books April 2011.

For more info please see www.abigailtarttelin.com and www.beautiful-books.co.uk

Come support me if you dare - it’s my first reading of the book.

Here’s the blurb:
“In 2010 in the North of England one witty, acerbic, hot and happening fifteen-year-old scrambles haplessly through his first summer of love (and sex), running into troubles with drug dealing, fate and quite possibly hubris, which all serve to stand in the way of him and his sweetheart getting some serious rolling-in-the-hay-time. Will they make it through? Will he escape from the clutches of the local coke-baron? Will he fuck it all up?? Think ‘Trainspotting’ meets Melvin Burgess’ ‘Junk’ via Richard Milward’s ‘Apples’. A rollicking summer’s good time with philosophical meditations to boot.’

Details:

25th May, 7.30pm - 10.30pm (ish)

3 Blind Mice, 5 Ravey St, London, EC2A 4QW

Further directions: just off Leonard St, opposite a pub called The Griffin - there’s no sign so look for a big number 5 and the stairs to the basement bar!

In other news I’ve been campaigning for proportional representation with www.takebackparliament.com - anyone can come, go check out the site. (I’m in the green below…)

Monday 10th May, Rally for Proportional Representation

Monday 10th May, Rally for Proportional Representation



Abigail Chats With Melvyn Prior On BBC Radio

April 26th, 2010
Melvyn Prior, BBC Radio

Melvyn Prior, BBC Radio

Listen here (it’s about 40min in).

The mid-morning show on BBC Radio Lincolnshire kindly invited me back again for a chat, this time with Melvyn Prior. We talked about FLICK, my first novel, out Spring 2011 and films past, present and future, so listen in to hear the latest.

It’s always a pleasure to go on the show and as ever I had a great time. Thanks to Melvyn for having me and Heather, Clare and Judy Theobald for getting me on the show and taking care of me with a nice cup of tea!



Abigail’s First Novel ‘FLICK’ To Be Published April 2011

April 21st, 2010

Yes! I wrote a book. My first novel, FLICK, has been sold to publisher Beautiful Books, who will publish it in many forms in the UK & commonwealth from around April next year.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Simon and the team and owe so much to my wonderful agent Jo, for all her support and hard work getting Flick to publishers and patience in answering my many questions! Jo has today been shortlisted for Literary Agent of the Year by the Booksellers Industry Awards, and I completely and utterly believe she deserves the title.

This was the inside cover for the CD that was sent out with Flick to publishers. Photo by Thomas Bartels, the awesome and dashing german filmmaker/photographer.

This was the inside cover for the CD that was sent out with Flick to publishers. Photo by Thomas Bartels, the awesome and dashing german filmmaker/photographer, which I have shamelessly besmirched by my imperfect photoshopping.

I was asked to pitch FLICK a short while ago on my writing blog (which will soon be amalgamated with this one) and came up with this:

“In 2010 in the North of England one witty, acerbic, hot and happening fifteen-year-old scrambles haplessly through his first summer of love (and sex), running into troubles with drug dealing, fate and quite possibly hubris, which all serve to stand in the way of him and his sweetheart getting some serious rolling-in-the-hay-time. Will they make it through? Will he escape from the clutches of the local coke-baron? Will he fuck it all up?? Think ‘Trainspotting’ meets Melvin Burgess’ ‘Junk’ via Richard Milward’s ‘Apples’. A rollicking summer’s good time with philosophical meditations to boot.”

Simon at Beautiful Books has likened it to a modern day Romeo and Juliet, and parallels have been drawn with Skins, Burgess and Milward by readers. I wrote it primarily for readers who would enjoy Burgess, Hunter S. Thompson, Bret Easton Ellis and Kurt Vonnegut, and to supply, hopefully, something that young men would like to read, that truly represents them. I know I’m a young woman, but I’ve canvassed my audience, partially because they make up 50% of my friends, and also because I’ve dated a lot of them.

The back of the CD. Photo also by Thomas Bartels. We have used here, Berlin as a stand in for Marske-by-the-Sea, Cleveland County.

The back of the CD. Photo also by Thomas Bartels. We have used here, Berlin, as a stand in for Marske-by-the-Sea, Cleveland County.

With a poor education system, arbitrary curriculum and a growing tendency in the press to dumb down content aimed at young males, exacerbated greatly by the burgeoning crop of Lad’s Mags and their active promotion of a culture of ignorance, we are causing a generation of young men to grow up voicelessly, without the ability to articulate their needs, determine their portrayal in literature or influence the literary output aimed at their readership.

My hope is that FLICK does something to offset this balance, not only by addressing this readership itself, but by encouraging more young men and women to take an active role in how they are represented in literature, by writing their own books and by calling for well-written, challenging and provocative literature to be written for all ages and sexes.

FLICK has been described as ’stunning’, ‘insightful’, ’romantic’, ‘oh-so-rude’, ’really sexy’,  and ’very funny indeed’. I do hope it lives up to expectations.

Flick at Conville and Walsh

Beautiful Books

Please also look out for Jo’s other authors, particularly Rebecca James, whose book Beautiful Malice is out this June/July, and Stephen Kelman, whose debut novel Pigeon English will be published around the same time as Flick. We were both in the office signing contracts the other day and it’s all very exciting at the moment. Also Happy Tenth Anniversary to Conville & Walsh! The party was brilliant, even if my memory of it is somewhat marred by an excess of champagne…



OldHeartAche

March 30th, 2010
I used to love you. You used to be a part of reality, my everyday, as commonplace as the breakfast bowl with the spoon sitting in oat-dirtied soya milk, as essential as a parent, your advice, care and attention completely necessary, and taken for granted. I used to love you. The way you moved your neat and nimble body, a pair of blue trousers, the sound that shame made in your skull, a wet, tearful choke. I used to know where you kept your dirty mags, the exact locations of the biro stains on your jeans, the approximate contents of your Mum’s fridge on any given day. I used to love you.
And years later, I sort of still do. Except I don’t. It’s just a memory of love now, like a shadow on a lung on an x-ray, or the shape of someone’s head left indented in a pillow, or the slight sink in the ground over old graves. It’s the residual tenderness of an old wound, how the head has moved on but the heart still aches with the pain of remembered love lost.


The Pressure Crescendo

March 26th, 2010
It builds up. You start to perform a task, it may be writing a book, or an essay (it is usually a writing task but can and will be applied to other such chores). The writing comes easily at first. You can pretty much make it up, there are no guidelines, there are no rules yet written that border the words you write and prevent that magical improvisation that feels like colouring outside the lines. And then you get about halfway through (say if you are writing a book you reach 40,000 words) and it slows slightly, partly because you now have to work within the frame you have already created and partly because you realise, ‘Wow, I’ve reached 40,000 words. That’s half the work done!’
Then you think, ‘Shit, I hope it’s good. If it’s not good I’ve just spent six weeks proving I am organised but untalented. Darn it.’ (It has only been six weeks because you are an impatient person. You think if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing quickly and slapdash.)
Now you have intimidated yourself.
The laptop seems to judge you from the remote desk as you blend lentils through the open door to the kitchen.
You have started to eat healthily, because you think if your mind and body are healthy, the writing will come.
It drips out in pitiful columns of size 12, plantagenet cherokee, uninspiring and confused. Then one day you eat three Dairy Milk bars and write 5,000 words. You have found the key to success, you have unlocked the door of your genius. The key is Dairy Milk. The unlocking is tasty. (You are supposed to be non-dairy. Aside from chocolate every other ‘milk’ product you consume is soya. You think this is healthy. But you are kidding yourself.)
The task nears its denouement. You are at 79,000 words. You were aiming for eighty thousand but it’s looking like it will be nearer ninety. It has taken three months. You have only the last chapter to write. Yes, you think, this will be the ultimate chapter, a chapter greater than the sum of all the others. This will speak to all its readers about the aching, raw core of life and what it is to be human. It will be uncompromising and have the rhythm of the driving rain, beat after beat after beat revealing truth after truth after truth. The reader will gasp. They will understand that all the beauty they have known prior to this moment has been deception, that here lies the secrets they have not, could not yet have claimed. Tears will press at the periphery of vision, and fall.
You idiot writer. You have intimidated yourself again. Where to go from three Dairy Milk bars a day? Not up, that’s for certain. (Unless we are talking about weight gain, and then yes, yes the only way is up.)


The Voice From Beneath The Pillows

March 11th, 2010
Once there was a girl and she was very depressed and alone in her bedroom, curled right up into her duvet, with her head underneath all her pillows and her hands on her eyes because the light was on and she hadn’t the energy to get up and switch it off. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically. The girl did not need a relationship for its own sake – no, she did not believe in that type of thing, however the girl felt very lonely. Her flatmate came into her room.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she mumbled into her sheets. She sounded like she had been crying, but she hadn’t, she had just been feeling a little glum where normally she was so cheerful and optimistic.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘I just want someone to share it all with.’ The voice came out muffled from beneath the pillows. It said everything I have said here about the girl. It was aching and sad and imbued with regret, but it was also young and innocent, soft, and sweet in its simplicity, both tonally and in the wish expressed.
The girl had to wait five years before she found a very nice boy to share ‘it all’ with, someone who was cheerful and optimistic too and appreciated the little things, like the warmth of the sun on his skin and the fragility of silence, beauty captured and shattered. Five years seems a long time, but it was worth it for the girl. And it will be for you. Get up.


Abigail Shoots For ACTS OF GODFREY

March 7th, 2010
www.actsofgodfrey.com

www.actsofgodfrey.com

I’ve been shooting here and there on different productions while writing Book Number 2, including an advert for DCM with Ray Winstone and this, the delightful ACTS OF GODFREY.

This came about around rather a circuitous route. In fact a distant and alarmingly cool relative of mine has a brother called Johnny Daukes, and Johnny is directing his first feature, AOG, which he also wrote, entirely, I might add, in rhyming verse (a USP and a half).

Strangely enough, and as it goes in the UK indie industry, I knew some of the crew anyway, and I had lovely chats also with everyone I didn’t know, which is one advantage of having no lines. So long story short my distant relative said ‘oh my brother’s making a film’ and I said ‘cool, I’d love to be involved’ and so I ended up coming in for a day to shoot as the Beauty Therapist, which turned out to be really, really fun.

The cast & crew were the nicest people and the film looks like it’s going to rock. Some phrases from the synopsis: ‘psychotic geriatric’ ’sexual wonder drug’… I’m not going to say anymore.

ACTS OF GODFREY stars Simon Callow, Celia Imrie, Doon Mackichan, Harry Enfield, Myfanwy Waring and many many more really cool people. I filmed with Michael Mckell (the charming rogue). A shout out to Michael and Doon.

Fore more info on the film please see here

For Johnny’s website click here