JEN BLACK author

Reluctance

2012-01-26T09:33:00.003Z

I've been working really hard these last few days. My left shoulder aches to prove it, though I don't know why sitting at a computer should make one shoulder ache and not the other! As I think I've said on this blog, I'm going through a second draft of the first Matho Story. I had named this volume Treason, but as my wonderful critique partner pointed out to me, an Englishman can't commit treason in Scotland, though he can in England. So as well as a second draft, I'll have to rethink the title.
The second volume of Matho's Story is written, but also needs that vital second draft polishing. I've already begun writing the third volume, which is going very slowly because of all the second drafting and also because I received edits for a novel called Reluctance. and also because all the details of French history and locations on the internet are in French, as you would expect.
I'd almost forgotten about Reluctance. I signed the contract for it so long ago, way back last year. Set in 1803, not quite the Regency period, and in the north of England rather than the overdone locales of London and Bath, it makes good use of my local area. In fact, I got the idea from visiting a local National Trust site at Gibside, one of my favourite places for a day out or even just a hour's walking in the woods. Back in the seventeenth century it was owned by the Bowes family, who married into the Strathmore family of Bowes-Lyon fame. Evidently the Queen Mother snitched a fireplace from Gibside and took it to the Castle of Mey - I think it was Mey.

So, if I work very hard today I should get the final read through of Reluctance finished and sent back to my editor. According to the knowledgable ones, I should be publicising the story now, even though it isn't published until April. An added distraction is the tennis match just coming through from Australia via the sling box! Oh, to be able to do everything at once!

Romance secrets

2012-01-23T11:53:00.001Z

Ovingham

In lots of romance stories, two charactersmeet – no, sorry, they more often collide – and claim they dislike each other, whileas writers we expect our readers to understand that love is simmering just below thesurface. Is this premise truly believable or should we dismiss it as absolutetosh?

Always in the romance genre there areproblems as to why the two couldn’t possibly be thought of as lovers. He’s tooproud, she’s too prejudiced. Rhett Butler is no certainly gentleman, whileScarlett is your true ladylike southern belle. (Put in your own names and see ifthey match what I’m about to say.) What happens as the story progresses? We findthat Scarlett has it in her to cheat, lie and steal in a way that makes Rhettlook positively gentlemanly. Darcy proves he has the guts to see his faults andchange his ways, while Lizzie recognizes with dismay how hasty and ill-judged herspeedy character assessments were - not only of him, but also of Whickham.

Are they really the disparate charactersfirst presented to the reader, or are they much closer to each other in tastes, habits andthought? I think Darcy and Lizzie are alike in many ways.In fact, Darcy and Elizabeth admit as much, and the film Gone with the Winddemonstrates how similar Rhett and Scarlett are in their courage and desperatewill to survive and keep their dependents alive.

Perhaps this is the truesecret of the romance genre - that couples should share values and traits,however deeply they are hidden or obscured by initial impressions.

They’d have to have something to share, ortheir lives would be hell. Wouldn’t they?

Oxford commas

2012-01-21T11:05:00.000Z

It was my local authors' lunch yesterday, hence my dereliction of duty regarding a new blog post. After a lovely lunch and much general chatter, we got down to talking about writing. The Oxford comma became a topic. Now I was interested in this because having done edits with more than one US indie publisher, I've noticed how much more frequent is their use of a comma.

I'm not denying commas are important. As Truss says in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a humble comma can change the sense of a sentence. Take for example:
"Verily, I say unto thee, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise" and compare it to "Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise." See how the meaning changes?

The Oxford comma is the one that comes after white in the sentence "The boat is red, white, and blue." In the UK, the standard usage is to omit it. In America, standard usage is to put it in.

Since the comma is one of those markers in language that indicates where the reader

ice fowers

should slow down and pause in order to fully appreciate what is being said, then sometimes the extra comma is useful and sometimes it is not. My own feeling is that quite often one's reaction is no more than noticing something different, something unusual. Americans notice the comma is missing, in the UK we notice there's an extra comma where we wouldn't expect one. Does it destroy the reading enjoyment of the story? Not really. Not for more than half second, anyway.

What I do find confusing is when to use commas joining two complete sentences. When I'm edited in the US, they take out the ones I use, and put in ones I wouldn't, and I can't always see why. In the UK, commas are used with conjunctions such as and, or, but, while and yet. But we never do it with however and nevertheless.

Just to make life even more confusing, there's something called the splice comma. When the conjunction is omitted and the comma is retained, when it should really be a semi-colon - that's a splice comma. Example: Pansy woke up in an unfamiliar bed, she felt odd. Famous writers like Updike, Beckett, E.M.Forster and Somerset Maugham use it, and get away with it. Used by them, it is considered dashing, poetic and effective, says Truss. Done by those who don't understand the rule, it is awful.

All I can add is that I get very confused when the grammar I learned at school and have used all my life is deemed to be incorrect. I sit here and muse how very different the novels of Nora Roberts would be if her books were put into UK English before they were loosed on the British public. Watch caps and Oreoes? What the hell are they?

E-Publishing

2012-01-18T11:53:00.000Z

frozen delights

I should have entitled my last post as E-Publishing rather than Self-Publishing, and I'm surprised I didn't get a host of comments pointing out my basic mistake.

So let me say right away that self-publishing is either
a)Vanity publishing or
b) publishing yourself via Amazon Kindle. (I've not investigated Smashwords, Nooks, Kobos and the like yet. My learning curve has reached astronomical heights in figuring out the Kindle process, and I'm resting on my laurels for a while.)

I think we all know that in Vanity Publishing, the author pays someone to publish his or her work. Using Amazon Kindle is different in that the author pays no one, and has to do all the work of getting the ms up there as a buyable commodity. if you can write good tales but know next to nothing about formatting and using unfamiliar software, then the obvious route is via Vanity Publishing. For those who have some knowledge of software and not enough dosh to pay someone to do all the hard work, then the Kindle route is preferable.Both situations provide an open door for a lot of authors who would otherwise never get published, who perhaps should not be published - but it also provides a springboard for those who have a good story to offer but find that today's recession-ridden publishing world simply won't take a risk on them. As an aside, it seems that there are a lot of people in the world who want a fast, cheap read that has few pretentions to literary fiction. As in everything else, the range is wide and there is a market at every level.

The independent e-publishers, on the other hand, are more willing to risk taking on an unknown author. They vet the offered work and reject or accept according to their varied criteria.Their editing levels are varied, too, and so are their royalty rates and contractual demands. But it must be remembered that the range is wide, and while one end offers low quality writing for sale, the opposite end offers high quality.

Self Publishing

2012-01-16T11:05:00.004Z

There is still a lot of confusion about self-publishing out in the writing world and I suspect the lines are blurring again. There are various options:

Pay someone to publish your book for you. This used to be called vanity publishing. Basically it doesn't matter how good or bad your book is, there is always someone who will publish it simply because you are paying them to do it.
Small independant firms, mostly in the US, may choose to take up your book and publish it in e-format. This route requires that you submit the usual partial chapters, synopsis, cover letter and sometimes a plan for how you intend to promote your book if it is published, by e-mail. Everything is done by e-mail. They pay all publishing costs, and you receive a royalty on sales. Editing standards are as variable as the reliability of the company, and the range goes from very good to dismal.
Larger independant firms, still mostly in the US, who have been around for a decade and have a stable of known authors on their books. They are as hard to break into as the big publishers. Submissions are often closed for months at a time.
Then there is the fairly new avenue of going with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing programme. For this, you need a fairly good knowledge of formatting, but it is possible to upload a Word programme ms. onto Kindle all by yourself. You decide how much to charge for the book, provide the cover, write the blurb, and promote it yourself. You are managing director of your own publishing company, but you are also the skivvy who checks the books. Royalties depend on sales, but it costs you nothing to put your book up there. Great for backlist, or for those tired of submitting, waiting, and getting rejections; or those books where the publisher has suddenly gone out of business, as happened with me.

Cold days

2012-01-15T11:29:00.002Z

I seem to be a little out of synch with my posts. I don't usually bother at the weekend, as everyone is busy with family and home, but today - why not? Yesterday was cold, and last night even colder. Today the frost is gripping hard and shows no signs of letting up. The first supply of peanuts and sultanas are out ont he bird table and the blackbirds are mobbing it. I'll save my brisk walk until around midday, when it might be a tad warmer.
Still, it's good weather for getting work done. DH is excavating floorboards in order to insert lights in the ceiling of the floor below, and in between the horrendous whine and howl of the drill-thing he's using, I can get on with my own stuff. Wrote 1200 good words yesterday that didn't need much polishing up, and will aim for the same today.

frozen sundial

The tricky thing is getting my character from point A - point B in France, and trying to describe sixteenth century French countryside. My French is limited, which makes research something of a guessing game. But I'll use what I know of the country today and historical facts I'm sure of, and see what I end up with. Maybe taking Matho to France wasn't such a good idea after all!

Spines are important!

2012-01-12T06:00:00.000Z

Sutherland mountains

I have had wandering pains in my chest for nearly six weeksnow, and finally made appointment at surgery expecting to be told I had a chestinfection. Seems I needed an osteopath instead, so I made an appointment withthe recommended person and duly trotted into his consulting rooms that sameafternoon.

Believe it or not, Ihad three ribs out of place, and probably all due to poor posture ie slouchingon the sofa with my feet up all evening. With the ribs duly clicked back intoplace and lots of advice I now feel back to normal. It seems walking, cyclingetc do nothing for the spine, not even power walking where the arms seems asactive as the legs. For my age (ah! Those dreaded words) my spinal movement ispretty good, but I need to exercise it properly to keep it supple and I shouldnot, repeat not, slouch on a sofa with my feet up for four hours every evening!I must sit properly, and get up several times through the evening, and do the prescribedexercises.

I have done them all through today – and if the spine isreally out of shape and needs to be kept flexible, some unlucky persons need todo the exercises every four hours through the night. But this morning I woke upand there wasn’t a twinge to be felt, so I am following the advice verycarefully indeed from now on.

The exercises arereally simple, too. Raise a straight arm until it touches the ears, slide the handdown the thigh until it reaches the knee, slide the hands down the shins to thefeet if you can, clasp the fingers at chest level in front of you and turn the arms sideways as far as you can; andfinally, rotate the pelvic girdle. Now do on the opposite side. Voila. You shouldhave a nice supple spine.

Borgen

2012-01-10T12:03:00.001Z

ancient door handle at Blanchland

I'm awaiting the next installment of Borgen, the newest Danish tv serial to reach UK shores. There's something fascinating about the way Danish tv has suddenly woken slumbering audiences with the quality of their crime thrillers. First The Killing 1 - twenty hour long episodes chronicling the police investigation of a young girl's murder, with all the dead ends, sudden deductions and loose ends showing the confusion that faces police forces with every such case. It also shows the nightmare for the victim's slowly disintegrating family - the endless questions, and the revelations that prove she had a secret life her parents knew nothing about.

The chilly character of police investigator Sarah Lund isn't one you wouldexpect to prove a hit with audiences, for she never explains herself or her actions, is abrupt with colleagues and witnesses alike. Her personal life is put on hold again and again, because she is gripped by the need to find the murderer and will go to any lengths to track him down. Yet her big-eyed, calculating stare holds a fascination. We wonder what she thinks, what makes her do what she does? What does she see that we've missed? What thought processes does she follow?

The sub-titles from Danish are a boon to me. Often in modern tv I mishear or don't understand the rapid, garbled speech, particularly in American tv shows, where sentences are truncated and idioms abound. Now I can follow the plot perfectly - well, as far as understanding the dialogue goes.
Killing II was equally as good as Killing I, and I've noticed that the male leads from each series have turned up in Borgen. It's interesting to observe them in different roles, but I do keep wondering when Sarah is going to turn up in her favourite sweater.

FAIR BORDER BRIDE excerpt

2012-01-08T11:52:00.001Z

Today I thought I'd add a small excerpt from Fair Border Bride. Set in the rough world of the borders between England and Scotland in the mid sixteenth century, a pretty girl distracts Harry from his mission:

Harry gritted his teeth, offered his most elegant bow and watchedthem go. The young lady tossed a swift, laughing glance over her shoulderbefore the crowd took her away.

Harry turned to the stallholder. “Who was that?”

Of little height but ample girth, the stallholder regarded himfrom shrewd blue eyes. “Fancy ye chances, lad? That was the lady of Aydon Hall.Margery Carnaby and her daughter Alina. They’re a-carin’ for Sir Reynold, himthat’s ill and like to die soon.”

“Aydon? Just north of here?”

“Aye. Right by the Ay Burn. Ye’ll be a stranger to these partsyourself, sir?”

Harry saw no need to deny it. “Travelling north to Edinburgh.”

“Oh, aye. And ye’d be from Lonnun, then, sir?”

Harry gave her his best smile. There was no harm in lettingeveryone think he was from the south. In fact, it was to his advantage. “How’dye guess?”

The dark wool shawl draping her shoulders moved as she shrugged.“Ye don’t sound as if ye come from these parts. Ye sound more like gentry. Ithought o’ Lonnun, that’s all.”

“It is quieter hereabouts than London.”

Mary handed him a neatly wrapped package and named her price.“Quiet, d’ye think, lad? It’s but a hundred miles to Edinburgh, and ye’lltravel some o’ the most dangerous land in the country to get there.”

Counting out coins into her palm, Harry hesitated, and his gazerose from the coins to the woman’s rosy, thread-veined face.

“Dangerous for everyone, or just for me?”

Mary choked back a laugh. “There’s outlaws and broken men up in’thills, my bonny lad, and they’ll shake loose the Border whenever they take afancy to dee it. They’ll not stop to ask ye name, never mind ye destination,before they slit ye throat and ride off wi ye purse.” She looked him up anddown. “They’ll no’ forget ye sword nor ye dagger, either, not even that bonnyjewel in your cap. Nekkid as a babe ye’ll be, when those limmers leave ye.”

He resumed counting out coins into her plump hand. “I’d best takecare how I ride then,” he said. “For ride I will.”

Her blue eyes twinkled. “Luck be wi ye, sir.”

Harry slid the small package inside his doublet and wandered on,whistling silently through his teeth, wondering if he should have asked aboutguides for the next stage of his journey. Better not; he didn’t want every villageidiot knowing his business. He’d use his own judgement in finding a man whoknew the routes through the hills.

Marquee names

2012-01-06T11:51:00.001Z

Blanchland

No, I'm not going to be talking about tents on lawns or river banks, but historical novels.
Evidently marquee names are novels written about a really well-known historical person, such as Mary Queen of Scots. Some do it head-on, with the historical person as the lead character. I suppose Phillippa Gregory's books fit this mould. Lately it has seemed that such books have taken over the historical genre.

Gone with the Wind is my idea of historical novel, and it's not just a best-selling historical fiction novel, it's the best-selling novel of all time. Scarlett O'Hara is not a historical celebrity, but she certainly leaps off the page, just as copies of the book leapt off the shelves. Hopefully in today's confusing world, the marquee name has not crowded truly fictional characters off the bookshop shelves, otherwise Fair Border Bride doesn't have much hope of success. True, I've used real historical people like Sir Thomas Wharton to give the story some ballast and enhance the setting of the warlike borders of Tudor England and Stewart Scotland, but the major characters are out of my head.

Alina Carnaby may have existed on parchment as an early medieval heiress in the Tyne valley, but there's precious little known about her life. I borrowed the names of her three brothers and used them, too. Starting with only a name, it was up to me to give them life and personality, and that's what I enjoyed doing. I even gave the seven-year-old brother a lisp when he was nervous!

It could be that there's a danger in sticking too close to real historical persons, for they accepted things and did things that we find reprehensible today. Life was far too barbaric for us to really think as they did, when something as simple as a cut finger could lead to a nasty, lingering death from blood-poisoning, and bubonic plague killed a third of England's population. With death hiding around the next corner, there's no wonder that religion figured in people's lives far more than it does today. Hunger was endemic, and murder virtually undetectable. War maimed and killed men, marriage was a business proposition and childbirth killed women. People lived off the land, or were dependant on the bounty of their local lord; he in turn was dependent on the gift of the king, who taxed the people when his coffers ran dry.
Perhaps we really need the romanticising of history to make it palatable.

Endless editing?

2012-01-04T11:04:00.001Z

cottage in Blanchland

Read this article by Nicholas Carr in the Wall Street Journal, and see if it makes you think.
I hadn't realised that once I'd loaded a book onto Amazon's Kindle programme, I could still edit any little problems I spotted once it was up there. But evidently you can. According to Mr Carr, it's easy-peasy, and though I have no wish to go through my publishing to Kindle experience again quite yet, thank you, many of you will no doubt seize the opportunity.
I can see Mr Carr's point re text and reference books. Incredibly easy to update them once they're electronically published, and no need to keep track of editions, but I can hear book publishers and booksellers groaning as they read his article. Not to mention authors.
It isn't exactly in anybody's interests, apart from the reader.

But then again, if the reader wants the latest information, they'll have to keep on buying the same title until some bright spark comes up with software that will automatically update the copy you bought three years ago. That really would be a death knell for many!

As for fiction....for the ephemeral stuff, here to day and gone tomorrow, it doesn't really matter that there may never be a definitive copy. But when we speak of classics, modern classics and bestsellers that will last on through the years - don't we want to read the same words as everyone else? Won't we object if the author pesists in tweaking and fiddling and changing the text because s/he isn't satisfied with the "finished" work?

Food for thought indeed.

Sneck

2012-01-02T14:02:00.000Z

SNECK is a word used in Scotland and Northern England either as a noun or a verb. It comes from Middle English and relates to a door fastening. My dictionary says it is the same as latch, but to me that isn't so. Remember the 1960s term "latch-key kids?" There is a whole different meaning: a latch is something you drop in order to lock the door. A sneck will certainly drop, but it won't lock. The only way you could stop someone getting in from the outside was to ram a stick or an iron bar through the sneck, which effectively jammed it shut.
The first pic shows the outer side of the door, the street side. This is on a pub door in Blanchland, and you grasp the handle and push down the sneck with your thumb - hey presto, the door opens!

This is the same thing, only fancier. This was on the Abbey door in Blanchland, which was was consecrated around 1146.
Set where the green fields turn to rising moorland, the whole village boasts a population of around 140 and was formed in the by then Bishop of Durham, out of the medieval abbey buildings. Click for more info on the Bishop, and here for more on Blanchland. evidently Blanchland hit the news in 1715 when Tom Forster, one of the Jacobite rebels, hid in the chimney of the Lord Crewe Arms, one of the oldest hostelries in England.
The third pic is inside of the church door, showing how the wood is much battered by the constant movement of the iron sneck as it is lifted and closed. Let it drop by accident, and the noise is horrific in the confines of a stone building!

The final pic is the other half of the very first picture; cruder, but essentially the same design on the inside of the Lord Crewe Arms. They're still in common use and though people use them without thinking, they don't always know what they're called.

Characters

2011-12-31T11:33:00.003Z

Gorse, broom, plant a genet

It seems to me that characters make stories rather than plot. On the other hand, where would the Da Vinci code be without plot? Maybe I should have said I prefer stories that are character-driven rather than plot-driven.
What a character does in response to the inciting incident defines the action for the rest of the story, and this in turn defines the plot line. The character may react in a different way to you or your best friend, but that does not make the reaction incorrect. It might be different, a tad out of the ordinary, but it doesn't mean his reaction is wrong. That's simply how he is. He may be unskilled, or uneducated and naive, but he'll learn as he goes, as we all do.

Some people make the same mistake again and again. Most of us take a little time to learn something, and while our first error might well be catastrophic, the second stab at the same thiing will hopefully have smaller repercussions because we are aware of where we went wrong the first time. But hey - who makes the perfect response every time? And don't you love reading about a character who makes mistakes, but plods on and gets it right next time? I know I do.

Gorse is blooming again in our neighbourhood. It shouldn't be. It should wait until May or June and then spring into banks of glorious yellow flowers. The world has gone crazy.

A day in York

2011-12-29T10:52:00.001Z

Yesterday did not start well. Hair took forever to dry and did not style easily. Sometimes it just falls into place, others, it goes everywhere but where I want it to go. Then strap broke, so had to select another garment. On the road to York,we saw signs announcing certain A1 junctions had been closed. This provoked much comment in the car about which junctions had been mentioned, where they were and if it would affect us.
End result - we found ourselves involved in a 3-lane halt-and-crawl for at least an hour and half, thus extending our journey time to twice what it ought to have been. To add insult to injury, when we finally did arrive, York was freezing. A vicious wind slapped through every open space, and it is lucky we were to be able to scamper into the narrow, twisty, enclosed streets of the old city which kept the wind out. Fenwicks cafe was a nice warm haven as we wern't prepared to stand in the queue for Betty's tea rooms, though Penny would have enjoyed their quaintness.
By four o'clock we were ready to leave via the A19 rather than the A1 and lo and behold we inched our way out of York in another nose-to-tail crawl - this time because the ring road traffic blocks anything coming out of the city. The York city council should start thinking about fly-overs and under-passes to ease the traffic flow. It'll be years before I think of going to York again!
I finally got hold of the pics on dh's camera, which has a much better range than mine, and discovered this pic of the deer we saw on our drive north to Inchnadampf. On my camera, they were nothing but tiny brown specks. Click on this one to enlarge it, and see what they really looked like!

E-publishing row

2011-12-27T10:24:00.002Z

http://tiny.cc/h090f and http://tiny.cc/hziaz

There’s a storm brewing about major publishers bandingtogether to prevent e-books being sold at low prices. You may already be fullyinformed, but if not, try the two links to get the general idea. For me, thebeauty of e-books is the convenience, coupled with the low price. If publishersexpect me to pay the same price for an e-book as I do for a paper copy, then I’llopt for the paper copy every time. There’s nothing to love in an e-book but thestory, but just looking at a paper copy with a decent cover gives me pleasure. I can’t look at anelectronic copy, can I? I can only look at a Kindle. I wonder if people to whobuy e-books buy only those stories that will entertain them for an hour or twoand are then prepared to move on to the next. In other words, reading fills andempty hour or two, but the story is instantly forgettable. Whereas I want to beable to buy novels I want to read and keep, perhaps read more than once, andbuy them cheaper than a paper copy. Somehow I can’t see the two desires beingfulfilled by the same system. Maybe I’m asking for too much?

Christmas blues

2011-12-23T11:54:00.000Z

Happy band at Gibside

Trying to get into the Christmas spirit but hampered by feeling woozy. At nearly noon, this is not a good thing when accompanied by sharp pain in side when taking a deep breath. Slept sitting up in bed last night, as easier to breathe that way. Cannot decide if I should ring the surgery or not.
Sigh. By the time I decide it will be too late and they'll all have gone home for Christmas. Perhaps this thing, whatever it is will, disappear of its own accord. Hope so.

Meanwhile, not up to usual comments, percipient or not. Have just prepared venison casserole and put it in the slow cooker. By tonight it will go in the freezer and be ready to eat with very little effort next week when guests are here. They're coming all the way from Australia, so effort required!

Tonight, as luck would have it, is the night for our "street party" at the Hilton in Newcastle. Planned for months, all the cul de sac attending, smart hotel, Christmas fare, and self feels woozy already. Better stay off the wine.

Names

2011-12-21T13:23:00.000Z

Gibside Woods

Are names important in fiction, or just a character label?If you were choosing a label for a young magician who was going to have amazingpowers, wouldn’t it be tempting to call him something special? But J K Rowlingchose Harry Potter, something so ordinary we barely notice it.

Arthur gives out only a faint chime of recognition until itis linked with Merlin, and then it takes on a whole new significance. One ofthe most feared English kings was the eighth Henry, a name that today ringswith total insignificance. How many kids are named Henry today? One thing I have noticed in Real Life is that its no longer possible to tell a child's heritage by name alone. Names that once belonged to a certain nation are now used by any parents who decide they like the name. Therefore we have lots of Scots, Irish and Welsh names filtering down into English households when there seems no link back to the roots those names might suggest.

Reading the cast lists of tv and films is entertaining, and not for the quirky spellings alone. Summer and Breeze are no longer unique, and I swear I have seen Field and Lane listed. I kept waiting for Hedge coming up, but then we veered off to the Peach Blossom tangent beloved of pop stars. Cute children with cute names are one thing, but when that child is in its forties, I wonder if it will be heading down the name-changing route?

Romance novelists scour the lists and come up with nameslike Blane, Dare, Noble, and Amaury. It seems the name has to be different, sharp-sounding and if possible have only one syllable. What does this say, if anything, about current naming fashions among authors? and how do readers feel about it?

The joy of titles

2011-12-19T11:45:00.003Z

Advertising at Gibside

Cold weather starting to bite now. Down to minus 6 Centigrade in Yorkshire overnight, and we weren't far behind. Today it is raining, my least favourite winter weather. Damp and cold. Ugh.
Time to be indoors snuggling up to my computer and thinking of travelling through France in the summer of 1544 with my trusty hero.
I'm thinking of sending out a new partial sub. for Matho One even though it's only a few days to Christmas. The literary agents can't be at parties all the time, and surely most authors have better things to do than submit to agents at this time of year? Maybe my sub. will sneak in and catch people by surprise when they're in a good mood and with time on their hands!
I tentatively titled this story Treason, but as someone pointed out, Matho may not actually be committing treason simply because he crosses the border from England into Scotland. As a foreign national, what he sets out to do in Scotland is more properly an act of war. So I'm back to no title again.

Gibside Christmas Fair

2011-12-17T14:29:00.003Z

Gibside Christmas Fair

We had our first snow yesterday. Not much, and the sunshine cleared most of it, but oh boy, was it cold! It's still cold today, but it was the Christmas Fair at Gibside, so off we went.

We expected a few intrepid punters, but the numbers in the car park surprised us. Changing from shoes to hiking boots without overbalancing in the snowy grass was fun, and as we walked into the Fair, we found the Prudhoe Community band playing rousing tunes that carried on the cold air. Stalls were set out under the trees, and lots of people milled about. We decided to head for the Long Walk and then up through the trees to the stables. We had the woods to ourselves all the way to the Stables, and every so far along the trails we noticed items hidden in the trees. Nearby a notice declared something along the lines of: Santa had dropped a parcel from his sleigh as he was passing by - can you find it? Then there was the spot where Rupert refused to go any further until he'd had a midnight snack - but where?

By the time we'd enjoyed a coffee and a browse among the bookshelves (lots of paperbacks for sale at £1 each, including Clair Tomalin's Jane Austen) and ventured out again, people had abandoned the Fair and spread out into the estate. Children roared around screeching as they found each hidden item and parents had the fun of watching them. So did we!

Thinking ahead

2011-12-15T12:51:00.001Z

Deeside

As a well known writing magazine states, the best way to beak into Women's Fiction is to keep at it. (I think they're talking about writing.) Strong characters and relationships are important and we all like emotionally driven stories. One agent says she wants a powerful story that will grab her by the collar and not let go.

Well, that's fine, as far as it goes. But what grabs her by the collar may be a story that barely holds my interest and the next person might toss it unread back on the pile. Reading is so subjective that advice in the round almost meaning unless by sheer chance you happen to find the agent who thinks exactly like you do. And the chances of that happening are about as lucky as the snowball rolling unscathed through hell.

One thing the agents agree on. Chick lit, mom-lit and sex-lit have all decreased in popularity. Chick lit, they say, has migrated down to Young Adult as women's coming-of -age stories, or more hopefully YA has migrated upwards to encompass it. Either way, women now want more challenging reads.

'Positive effects of the right balance of emotional appeal will help the reader connect with the characters as well as create an exciting an unpredictable storyline' (Katie Shea of the Donald Maas LA)
'Readers will be looking for more sweeping plots, big stories that are very involving, thought-provoking and don't necessarily have black and white happy endings.' (Dorothy Lumley, Dorian LA)
'Write something that stands out, something different...new, fresh - something that makes you think. Women want books they can discuss in groups. They want more substance.' (Jane Judd)
'Real women want to read something they can relate to...family reationships.' (Wendy Sherman.)
So there you have it. Something for everyone. But make it fresh, make it exciting and give it substance.
Catch the whole article in the January edition of Writing.

Bad Sex Awards 2011

2011-12-12T01:22:00.001Z

autumn on Deeside

I imagine literary figures must cringe when they see their name up there in black and white next to a heading like It's Time for the Bad Sex Awards again. It's intersting to see how bad some of them can be, too. Here are three links, so you can zip from one article to another and check out others as you go.

http://goo.gl/RuXbV, http://goo.gl/CBnvp and http://goo.gl/xJCQo

I suspect journalists see this topic as a bit of light relief in comparison with all the doom and gloom they have to think about most of the time. I must admit I approach the articles with a bit of a giggle in mind, but often I come away feeling dispirited and what I feel most of all is that these literary men don't really like sex all that much. Either that or they don't like women, for some of what they write, apart from being pure drivel, is often ugly and distasteful. It's very different to the way women write about sex. There is very likely an argument that says women overegg the cake and beautify sex beyond its merits, but I never come away from reading sex scenes written by a woman with the feeling that they dislike men, or sex. (Unless the storyline demands it, of course, which it often does in some genres.)

Perhaps we should have an award for Good Sex scenes, just to redress the balance a little.

Third time lucky

2011-12-10T10:48:00.001Z

My book is up there on Kindle for all the world to see. I'm reading it on my newly acquired Kindle and it looks fine. The only glitch I've spotted is that sometimes an Em-dash turns into a tiny question mark inside brackets, but hey - when did you last read a print book copy that didn't have a glitch in it? Ever since computers got involved in printing books, the typographical errors increased.
This book has had a checkered history. It got tied up in the Triskelion bankruptcy case when the American tax people froze all books and assets for over a year until they'd sorted everything, and it's had an uneventful couple of months with Sapphire Blue until that independant e-publisher decided to close last month. Since the rights came back the same day the company closed, I decided to go for the simplest option, which was Amazon's Kindle Publishing programme, and priced it very low.

I described Shadows as "a chilling tale, written with humour and drenched in the sights and perfumes of the rural Dordogne... a must-read tale for those who like a romance with a ghostly twist."

Anita Davison loves a great ghost story and thought Shadows "definitely does not disappoint...an exciting read...powerful and fast-paced writing...endearing and memorable characters."

Lindsay Townsend thought "Jen Black writes subtle, powerful characters, very nicely shaded, and I felt I understood Rory and Melissa and why they acted as they did. The older story of the ghosts is teased out in a compelling way and is genuinely moving and other-worldly - to write of ghosts as well as this takes some skill."

There's a book trailer as well -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGml0vxiJU8

Kindle woes

2011-12-07T11:49:00.001Z

Sometimes I wish I'd never started trying to publish this e-book to Kindle. The first one, Fair Border Bride, made me think it was so easy, but that was because I didn't realise the Table of Contents in that book wasn't properly linked. Oh, it links you to the chapter OK, but there's no link to the Table of Contents itself. You have to go to Cover, or Start, and click a couple of times to reach it. I don't think it's all that big a deal, personally, but now I've started this game, I'm persistant enough to want to get it right.

waterfall on the road to Lochinver

It will probably drive me insane before I'm done, and the worst thing of all is that I could be writing, which is much more fun. Perhaps I should just pay someone to do it. When I think that Optical Express are saying I owe them money now that I've cancelled my contract on contact lenses because they couldn't manage their direct debits properly, it galls me to think I could have spent that money on getting the darn book published.

Perhaps I'll just concentrate on Matho for a bit. I'm going through the first volume, prior to sending it out again, and letting volume two lie dormant for a while, but I've written the fist chapter of volume three. It's tricky, getting back into the mindset of Tudor times again, and I have to keep remembering that not all readers are guaranteed to have read vols one and two. Still, it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to cope with Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket and HTML files that don't transfer hyperlinks.

Quietly demented

2011-12-05T12:44:00.001Z

near Gairnshield Lodge

The weather here in the north has taken a turn for winter all of a sudden. Temperatures down as low as 2 degrees tonight, and there's snow in Scotland and up in the hill country and the Pennines. Time to break out the woolly sweaters and maybe think about thick tights under jeans. I'll also have to stock up on peanuts and bird food. They haven't needed us, but they've nicked all the berries off the holly bushes in mmy garden and they're starting on the cottoneasters now.

I have spent over a week diligently trying to get my file perfect for uploading to Amazon Kindle, but always the Table of Contents is greyed out - yes, even on my brand new Kindle - an early Christmas present from dh. I followed the Kindle instructions and the Table of Contents comes up on the screen, and it links the reader straight to any chapter selected, so I haven't a clue why it doesn't do exactly as Kindle wish.
I've lost count of my attempts. I've tried Intenet Explorer 9, discovered knowedgeable people think it isn't compatible with Mobipocket, tried Internet 8 on my laptop, tried it with the cover pic, without the cover pic, with the TOC, without the TOC, as Web Page, Filtered, as Web Page, and as a Word doc file, all to no avail. I've even stripped the story back to Plain Text and inserted minimum formatting and I've read countless websites and found I'm not alone with this problem.

So, I think I'm going to send the file off as it is and see what happens. If it's accepted and any of you wonderful people out there buy a copy of Shadows, then please remember the TOC does work. It just doesn't have its own little Go To link.

In case you wondering who this little fella is, he's the youngest of a Highland Cattle herd who live on the farm we visited.

Dark Landscape

2011-12-02T10:25:00.001Z

I found the Aberdeen side of the country very different to the west. Larger communities that look more stable somehow, as if they've been there a long time and aren't afraid to say so. Remembering the north west, the communities outside Ullapool and Lochinver always seemed romantic and somehow transient, without streets, often without drives or gardens; more as if they'd settled on a nice patch of land and would stay there for a while. Curious and interesting to see the two in the same visit.

I've often toyed with the idea of moving to the northwest, but I suppose it isn't practical and dh would hate it. I know there would be moments when I would miss being able to wander into Newcastle and around the big department stores - which I do rarely, but they're there when I want them. The M&S is one of the flagship stores, second only to London because we have such a cross sectional mix of people prepared to spend - the town and country types of the Tyne valley, the urban dwellers of Newcastle and Gateshead, the suburbans in countless villages up and down the river, like me, and then the holiday traffic that comes in from northern Europe - Scandinavia, Denmark, and as was reported on the news yesterday, cruise ships from the Faroes bringing people to do their Christmas shopping.

We drove through the hills from Tomintoul to Cock Bridge, said to be one of the highest roads in Britain at just over 2,000 feet, and the landscape got progressively darker, gloomier and downright bleak. To drive from home to the Lake District, we cross Hartside Summit into Cumbria, which is just over 1800 feet, but the scene is much more attractive than this road. A strange shape loomed on the hill ahead of us, and as we drove past we saw that it was the rather stark looking Lecht ski centre.

Compared to the ski resorts we've visited in Europe, Canada and the US, it didn't look appealing. A little further on, a shooting party had been on the hills, and we watched several Land Rovers gingerly edging their way across the hillside back to the road.

It may have all looked so much better in sunlight, but the sky was grey and grim, and the landscape was a dark, dirty brown green. From there the route was downhill most of the way to Ballater, and there the landscape changed again But more of that tomorrow.

Travelling on east

2011-11-30T11:00:00.001Z

The gorse was blooming for the second time along the river banks in Ullapool, and I've just realised we weren't plagued by midgies at all. Our second night in Waterside House the wind kept the ferry in port and made walking out to find a meal unpleasant. We tried the Ceilidh Place but it was overun with young people, cables, sound systems and we dedeuced that a gig was taking place that night. I think we could have stayed, but it would have cost us £10 each on top of the bill for food and wine, and our eardrums are not accustomed to the atomic blasts of sound these groups generate. We found somewhere else!

Main Square, Grantown

Next day we set off back to Inverness and had a splendid drive across the moors and down through the autumn woods to Garve, where the land changes slowly into lowland scenery. Green, fertile and gentle after the north west. Climbing the hill out of Inverness heading south on the A9, we turned off onto the A938 and headed for Grantown on Spey, where we stopped, had a coffee and walked through the town and across the wetlands to the river Spey. Halfway around the town, our mobile phone rang and the family wished me happy birthday from Australia! Many years ago I'd been here, and remembered huge pine forests running down to the river, which tumbled over rocks at a huge rate of knots. The river we saw was a disappointment, and there were no pine trees. Instead we had to detour under a new by-pass that has been put in, and the river was flat, brown and uninspiring. Disappointment all around. They say you should never go back, don't they? So we headed out on the 939 through Lynemore and Bridge of Brown to Tomintoul. Pretty countryside, and so very different to the north west!

Sun and wind

2011-11-28T09:18:00.001Z

Ullapool Bridge

Heading into town today to do some necessary shopping - not for Christmas, I might add, but for soap dishes and toilet roll holders - really exciting stuff! I'm hoping we've done all the DIY-ery we're doing for a while at least, and then I might be able to relax into writing a little bit more instead of listening for the terrible crash of falling tiles, or worse, of falling bodies.

Glastullich

So, after a brisk explore of Ardvreck, we drove on down the A835 towards Ullapool and telephone the Waterside Inn to secure a bed for the night. Once settled in, we walked out in sunshine along the shoreline and the river towards Ullapool Bridge and then on up the track towards Loch Achall. A pleasant walk uphill, now and then standing aside for the huge lorries working the quarry, which has expanded a good deal since we were last on this path. Eventually the track crosses the river, where the views open out, with Glastullich peeping out across the hillside and the loch disappears ito the distance. Much better weather here than a few miles further north! We walked until we got tired and then turned back, looking forward to a good meal and a good night's sleep. We'd just got back into our room when the five o' clock ferry hove into view. It reversed in, and, as it happened, stayed there. The wind was rising, and forming little waves on the loch, so out on the Minch it must have been quite rough. Everyone hoping to get across to Stornoway that night was stuck.

Ardvreck

2011-11-25T09:45:00.001Z

Working hard on Matho's story now. It's been put aside for the right amount of time, and I can see why the three agents I submitted to said they liked the story, the premise, the setting but were not sure they liked the writing - though they thought that was confidant and well done. The comment certainly me puzzled and I decided to withhold sending it out any more until I'd gone through it again. Reading historical stuff on the market today, and then reading my ms, I see that I have been influenced by US writing standards - short, clear sentences, short paragraphs and little description. Seems that is not what UK agents are accepting, but at least I know what to do now.

Ardvreck Castle

Back in the north west of Scotland, we tootled up and down the front street of Lochinver, and stared out at a grey horizon were sea and sky simply merged into one another. Clouds sat on the mountains, and everything looked grey. Few shops, mostly closed because now it's out of season and few people about. Not an entrancing prospect. We've visited the Highland Stoneware Pottery many times, and didn't want to do it again as it just makes us want to spend more hard-earned cash. Getting out and walking some of the very pretty walks we've done before - one to Achmelvich, another to the Kirkaig waterfall, would be an invitation to another drenching.

So we set off east out of Lochinver on the A837 alongside Loch Assynt and Ardvreck Castle on the way back to Ullapool. I photographed the notice board, which hopefully will show up more clearly if you click to enlarge the pic, because there is little left of the castle. It stands on the island side of a neck of land jutting out into the loch, and a cetain times of the year when the burns are in spate and feeding the loch, it's possible they'd be splodging to get across.
Ardvreck

It's a pity it's so much an unstable ruin, because it was built around 1490 and in use in the sixteenth century, which is the era that really interests me. I came away with an impression of huge grey stones and wobbly bits of wall, small rooms and a wet and windy place to live - even today.

A dour, grey day

2011-11-23T12:42:00.001Z

I read a blog this week that still has me thinking about what it is that I might be doing incorrectly with my latest story. If you want to give yourself a session in frustration -
here is the place. If I hint at headings such as Limp and Lifeless Prose, All Questions but No Answers, I think some of you will get the drift of the piece. if you don't write, but read a novel a week, you might still be interested.

Clashnessie

Stoer

As for my travels in the north west, let me begin with the moment we stopped to admire the beach. We thought we were looking west at the Atlantic, assumed it was Stoer or even Clachtoll, but just a minute, isn't the sun in the wrong place? Hauled out the compass - yes, I do carry one, just in case of need! and then the map, and discovered we were staring due north at the rollers coming in across the sand of Clashnessie Bay. So, we were not as far on as we thought. Still, the driver needed a break from dipping and diving around blind corners, so we sat for a while. I think there were a total of a dozen houses that made up the village of Clashnessie, and some of them were a mile apart from their neighbours. As well as the typical modernised croft-cottage, we noticed large two and three story new builds away on the hill behind the village. Perhaps in season they take in tourists, but the end of October seems to be the signal for the end of the season. Certainly we had the road to ourselves. I think we passed only three or four cars, and they were all going in the opposite direction to us. A message there, perhaps!Once we moved out of the village, we caught a glimpse of a massive waterfall in the distance. Better weather and we might have walked over to it.

It was certainly spectacular, and I suspect it was so because of the overnight rain backed up in Loch an Easain and its chain of interconnecting lochs in the hills behind Clasnessie

Clachtoll

Moving on south and then south west toward Lochinver, we passed several settlements - Stoer with the graveyard and the roofless church, Clachtoll with the beach and a campsite - though we didn't see a single tent marring the bright green grass - and through the bleak, rocky moorlands. Away in the dsitance we caught a glimpse of aWe passed the turning for Achmelvich, off to our right, and had the weather been fine we would have gone to the wonderful white sand beach. But in dull grey misty weather even stunning beaches look damp and miserable. We pressed on to the T-junction and were so glad to be on a dual carriageway once more.

Heading west

2011-11-21T09:58:00.001Z

The B869

Well, our first real walk ending in getting soaked, and thenext morning the weather didn’t look any more promising. Odd, really. I’ve hadseveral holidays in this part of the world at this time of the year and there’salways been a week of sunshine and blue skies. Frost at night, perhaps, but whocares if the day is fine? This year is obviously not going the same way. So wedecided to move on and headed off towards Lochinver. Back down the A894 alittle way and then off west on the narrow, twisty B869.

Looking north

Wonderful views in spite of the dour weather. And because ofthe rain (it kept it up all night) the waterfalls were in full spate. Once wegot to the top of the hill, so to speak, we could look out across the north ofScotland, and as always, it looked sunny everywhere but where we were. One ofthe unwritten rules of Scotland is that if the weather is bad, then move on; itwill very likely be sunny in the next valley.

We proceeded cautiously. There’s little else you can do whenthe road is only wide enough for one car, and if you meet something coming inthe opposite direction, there’s a scramble to find a place wide enough for bothto pass safely. We found a village atNedd, quite a sizable community for the remoteness of the spot. I found myself wondering ifTesco delivered from Ullapool, or if the inhabitants drive the fifteen miles toLochinver every week for groceries. I suppose I driveten miles to my favourite supermarket once a week, but that’s on easy dual carriageways,not up and down hillsides on single track roads. Where does everyone work? Perhapsthey all work at home via the internet super highway. It’s possible. The outer edges of Scotland were into the electronic age long before everyone else, though it must have been frustrating wback int he days when using the internet tied up your phone line.

A drenching

2011-11-18T09:50:00.001Z

We walked along the shore to the old ferry landing on the north side and then on along the shore of Loch Glendhu. There's a pretty section through the forest and then out along the open shore line, which offered dramatic views of the hotel, the bridge and the mountains rearing up behind. If you look closely, you can probably see where we walked; we passed the first waterfall coming down the hillside, and the next was just around the corner, where the shadows start - it was also the exposed corner where the storm caught us, at the furthest extreme of the walk and with no shelter anywhere.

sunlight across Loch Glendhu (from the hotel window)

the sparrows were wet, too

By the time we got back to the hotel we were drenched and a hot bath was the only sensible thing. The sparrows came huddling in by the hotel during the worst of the rain while we sat in the lounge with a log fire and the beautiful view of the loch as the weather drifted over, the sun came out and the tide came in.
The land in the picture forms part of the Reay Forest which belongs to the Duke of Westminster and there's more information here, plus a rather nice video of the area. Taken in better weather than we had, I must say.

Kylesku

2011-11-17T10:41:00.001Z

Low tide at Kylesku

Tuesday I visited Chatsworth House with friends, and yesterday spent the day shopping and taking in a production of Nutcracker in the evening, which is why there was no blog post yesterday. Obviously I'm having far too much fun - but it was long overdue!

More of Chatsworth later - first I want to finish my Scottish trip. Pity about missing the Bone Caves, but we just pressed on into Kylesku where the Hotel is set in an enchanting spot right by the lochside. The Atlantic roars inland from Eddrachillis Bay and forms the Loch a Chairn Bhain, passes beneath the new bridge, built at the narrowest point, hence the name. Seton Gordon writes that Kylesku is a bad translation from the Gaelic Caolas Cumhang meaning the narrow strait. (He also claims that Quinag in Gaelic is Cuinneag and means milk stoup.) Once under the bridge, the loch divides into two - Loch Glencoul runs south east and Loch Glendhu runs east.

Looking across the water to the ferry landing at Kylesku

The bridge was built in 1984. Before that, the cattle had to swim across to get to market and the drovers and travellers used a rowing boat. If you check the link -
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/kylesku/kylesku/index.html. you will see pics of the bridge in far brighter weather than we had. I can remember using the old ferry, the Maid of Glencoul way back in the seventies. Her predecessor, the small, forlorn Maid of Kylesku is slowly rusting away where she was beached on the northern shore, not far from the picture above.

Map reading errors

2011-11-14T10:01:00.001Z

Reay forest

On 5th November a review for Fair Border Bride appeared on Historical Novel Review, which is very attractive review site you might well want to bookmark if you don't already have it in your favourites.

As well as reliving my trip to Scotland, I'm plodding on with work. Why is it that a synopsis always looks fine until I print it out, which is when I discover that it has mistakes and doesn't read too well? At this rate I'll never have a synopsis that will entice anyone to buy!

The last time I drove the A835, it was pouring down when we left Ullapool and still raining when we reached the Bone Caves at Inchnadamph. The rain was so heavy we didn't dare to get out of the car and attempt the walk up to the caves, but sat inside and watched water pouring down the mountainside in various spectacular waterfalls. So this year our goal was to enjoy the walk up the valley Fuaran Allt nan Uamh before we went on to Kylesku. The weather was OK, it was only four or five kilometres and we had the right map, boots, waterproof coats. (Often a failing of ours is not having the correct map for the walk we wish to take!)

Kyleskyu Hotel

So, we proceeded north, admiring the sight of Loch Veyatie and Suilven beyond, and guessing which mountain was Canisp and which Quinag. Before we knew it, we drove through Inchnadamph, a tiny place with hardly more than six dwellings and a hotel, and doubt set in. As we drove past the confusing peaks of Quinag,we realised we were almost at Kylesku and somehow, we'd driven right past the turning for the Bone Caves.

2011-11-11T09:38:00.001Z

The weather makes for interesting pictures. As I said in previous posts, we left Ullapool by 9 in the morning and drove out on the A835 and made only one or two brief stops to take in the view (believe me there are not many places where you can stop!) and yet, looking at the photos, one could be forgiven for thinking they'd been taken hours apart.
Not so. Today's batch are all taken in the stretch with Cul Beg and Cul Mor on the left and the vast cliff face of the Cromalt Hills on our right. Click to enlarge the picture and you may see the deer, but I doubt it!

The other thing about mountains is that they change shape. Not so much when walking, perhaps, but drive a few miles by car, look back and it's sometimes a struggle to recognise a single peak. Suilven is famous as a rounded hump on the eastern horizon when staring out from Lochinver. From this road, looking west, it presents a conical ridge and when we get further north, I'll be looking out for it.

At various places along the 835 it's possible to catch a glimpse of the old road winding off around an outcrop of rocks. Not wide enough to take one of today's cars, possibly wide enough for two people walking abreast, or more like a man walking beside his pack pony. It's a forlorn reminder of days gone by, and a shiver runs through me as I think of walking alone here a hundred years ago without a telephone, a car or any real map. I discovered the other day that travellers maps used to run in strips; a single road with way markers. No doubt you could roll it ip and put it in your pocket! Or maybe not. Flat packed in oiled canvas might be safer.

There's also admiration for the men who brave all weathers here to take electricity and telephone wires to isolated communities. Every now and then telegraph poles stalk across the tracts of swampy land and march straight up into the mountains, sometimes up the cliff face on our right. I wonder at the creatures who live up here, exposed to wind and rain even in summer, and icy blasts and snow in winter.

Stopping briefly, we look back the way we've come. From here to Ullapool isn't that far, as miles go; but in other ways, it's a whole different world.

On the A835

2011-11-09T09:45:00.000Z

Strathcanaird

The A835 is a splendid road as it winds and curves through the mountains of Coigach towards Assynt. Strathcanaird is the last habitation for a while, and this is not a road for those who like Little Chefs, craft shops and cafes dotted along the way. It's a road that is a feast for the eyes, and pity the driver who dare not look at the scenery for fear of driving off it!

Stac Pollaidh

Mountains have a character all their own, and I often get the feeling that its not me that's moving, but them. They're not high, as mountains go; few of them are Munroes, over 3,000 feet. But they stand isolated and humped and jagged in the landscape and look as mountains ought to look. Take Stac Pollaidh for instance. Not quite 2,000 feet, if memory serves, but it stands above Loch Lugainn like a cone with a ruffled top. From the summit you can look out, as I once did, over a vista of lochs and bays and out to the sea shining silver in the sun which isn't that far away in this picture. Imagine it, out beyond Stac Pollaidh.
If we'd driven just a hundred yards further, the road would have climbed that little bit more and the picture would have included the loch.

Cul beg and Cul Mor

It is a road full of surprises. There are footpaths, in the sense of hill tracks, in case I give the wrong impression, that lead to the mountains. Many of the small laybys have a parked car or two and no occupant enjoying the view or sipping thoughtfully from a thermos flask of coffee; they're often to be spotted plodding their way up some impossible seeming hill a couple of miles away. There are deer to look out for, and on this occasion, we found a herd of perhaps thirty, with a magnificent stag in charge. We watched them with binoculars for a while, but they were too far away for photographs. On my little camera, they'd have been no more than shades of brown among the brown heather.

An aside: as I learned my units of measurement in the good old English way of inches, feet, yards and miles I cannot cope with the metric system. I know a metre equals 39 inches, so if I have to, I grab a calculator, tap in the number of metres, multiply it by 39 to get inches and then divide it by twelve to get feet. Then I can understand, because feet mean something to me.

Ullapool north

2011-11-07T12:26:00.000Z

Waterside House does an excellent breakfast with raspberries, blackberries and blueberries to add to cereal. Dh dickered over kippers, but decided against it in favour of a full Scottish breakfast, including haggis and black pudding. I opted for the more cholesterol free choice of poached eggs on toast.
Thus fueled for the day we packed and set out, eading north to our next overnight stay at Kylesku Hotel. There's a long uphill drive out of Ullapool, down and then up again through a pass to Ardmair where a clutch of holiday cottages sit on the beach staring out over Loch Kenaird. Behind them are the green fields running back up to the crofts tucked in against the mountains - Cnoc Moin a Ghuail at 240 metres. 780 feet doesn't sound much, but the land goes from sea level to 780 feet in a little over a kilometre, or less than a mile.

Ardmair

We parked on the beach and watched the Cal-Mac ferry come steaming up the loch and disappear behind the headland Meall Mor on its way to Ullapool. The ferries always look so good, especially in sunshine when their colours stand out against the water and the hills.

Strath Canaird

Driving on took us alongside the stream they call Glutton on the map. Maybe there's an interesting translation - if I find out I'll let you know. Emerging at the top of that hill, there's a long curving run down to Strath Canaird and across the River Canaird at the lowest point. Here there's a turn-off marked Blughasary wich leads to a small clutch of buildings and a car park. Once upon a time the postie used to take the path from Blughasary and walk the cliff path to Achiltiebuie with letters. I tried it once, in my younger and fitter days, and found it was like walking on a cliff face. The path is marked on the 200 metres contour, with a sheer drop to the sea. It's for those of strong nerve.

First review and Scotland

2011-11-04T10:26:00.000Z

Lindsay Townsend gave me 5 Stars!
here's her review of FAIR BORDER BRIDE

"A beautiful bride in a turbulent country....
From its fast-paced, compelling opening, 'Fair Border Bride' is an exciting historical romance set in the border lands of northern England in 1543. The romance of Alina and Harry is full of incident and tenderness and is a well-told story, with moments of humor, sensitivity and passion. They are sympathetic, rounded people and believable in their dilemmas and conflicts. The other characters in the novel are also very well-drawn, and the whole is filled with fascinating historical detail about a part of England that is rarely explored in Tudor historical fiction. If you want to lose yourself in vivid adventure and romance, I have no hesitation in recommending this novel by Jen Black."

******************************************************************

We arrived in Ullapool around 4pm. The journey took 7 hours, door to door. Not bad. I'm aware it probably doesn't sound much to those who live in larger countries, but France, Canada and the US have so much open space to build wide roads, whereas we're just a tiny bit cramped.
Ullapool looked as gorgeous as ever as we drove down Loch Broom and saw the buildings, shining white in the sun, sticking out into the middle of the water and with the hills rising behind. We’d booked at Waterside House on West Shore Street and stared straight down from our first floor window into Loch Broom.
They say Saint Maelrubha came here from Ireland around 722. Certainly the Vikings were at Ullapool. Their galleys rode at anchor in the fine anchorage of Tanera Mor, and by 1775 there were approximately twenty buildings and a road where West Argyle Street and West Terrace now stand. In 1698 a fishing station was set up at Ullapool with the intention of developing the export of salt herring from Wester Ross to Stockholm, London and France. Herring were so abundant in Lochbroom that the people were using them for manure but it was not until the growth of Glasgow as a port, and as a exporter of salt and dried fish across the Atlantic for the slave trade, that the commercial fishing of the remote north west coast became feasible.If you want more history click

We walked about, enjoying the crisp, bright sunshine. There are two good bookshops in Ullapool, and at least two shops selling expensive knitted fashion garments, three fish and chip places cafes, and numerous pubs offering meals. We settled on the Ceilidh Place, which always seems to have young staff from other parts of the world working there. We chose venison stew in red wine, and found it delicious. click

First day continued

2011-11-02T06:00:00.000Z

Ben Wyvis

The run through Carrbridge, Tomatin and down to Inverness was marred by road works which always make me grind my teeth in frustration. Except for brief stretches of dual carriageway, where the speed limit is 70mph, most of the journey is single carriageway and limited to 60 mph. Road works frequently reduced this to 40, and sometimes 30 mph.

The worst bit was where a convoy system was in operation, with long tails of traffic following a ditzy little vehicle at a very sedate 30mph. Still, once we've crested the last hill, the view down to the Moray Firth opens up and it is so spectacular it always makes up for any delays. I didn’t take pictures because I was driving, and anyway we were dithering about stopping for petrol. As it happened, we didn't and I continued on across the spectacular bridge where the Moray Firth becomes the Beauly Firth, and took the A835 to Maryburgh and on through the soft green fields to the wooded hillsides of Garve.

Somewhere here we changed drivers again, and it’s at this point that the land starts to rise through the forests and the bulk of Ben Wyvis looms ahead and then falls behind us. The railway line follows the road at this point, but it soon branches off down the Strath Ban to Achnasheen and on to Kyle of Lochalsh while we take the right fork towards Ullapool.For a while the land is bleak and barren, though at this time of year the land is covered with the rich golden brown of bracken and heather. The contrast of such colour against the blue sky is wonderful.

Aultguish Inn

It isn’t long before one of the less spectacular sights of Scotland looms into view – the dam at the end of Loch Glascarnoch, immediately behind the Aultguish Inn. I doubt I’d sleep very deeply if I ever stayed there, for I'd be imagining the dam wall breaching and water pouring out onto the inn. Happily it isn’t an establishment we’d ever choose to stay unless caught in a snowstorm, for it seems to be the haunt of bikers, backpackers and those who like loud music in their bars. Scotland isn’t all spectacular. Particularly on the west coast, machinery is often abandoned and left to rust into the ground. Modern homes are plonked down in the middle of wonderful landscapes, and the old home, no more than three tumbled walls of grey stone and a tall chimney gable, rears up like a lone tooth, sometimes only yards away.

Ahead the mountains are rising. Excitement rises with them.

First day

2011-11-01T10:21:00.000Z

Byrness

Wednesday 26th we set off around nine in the morning and about fifty minutes later cruised over Carter Bar and into Scotland. It was one of those autumn mornings where you’re never sure if the weather will get better or worse, but you keep hoping for the best. From the Tyne valley, Northumberland is open country with Otterburn the only village of any size.

The A68 was empty. In places, mist rose along the streams and rose up from the trees like smoke against the blue and grey sky.

Once we wound our way up, over and down Carter Bar we hit the dreaded speed cameras. There must be 18-20 between the border and Edinburgh, and I’m sure they’re there simply to catch all the English who venture north.
We made it to Edinburgh inside two hours, but in summer, when the tourist traffic is high volume, then the single carriageway and all those speed cameras can turn the journey into a three hour marathon.

Blair Atholl woods

We headed north across the Forth Road Bridge, no longer a toll bridge thanks to Alex Salmond, and hoped the rusting cables inside the structure – the ones that hold the bridge up - didn’t snap while we were on it. We changed drivers at Kinross, about level with Loch Leven, and I drove on up the A9 around Perth and on up to Pitlochry. Around Blair Atholl Castle I turned off onto a side road, found a layby among the trees and we had a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

I tried to get a picture of the castle but found I risked life and limb back-tracking on foot down the road to find a clear spot in the trees. Discretion clicked in. The picture wasn’t worth being squashed between a stone wall and a 4X4 racing by at 60mph.

If you want, you can track the journey on Google Earth. Start from Corbridge and take the A68 north through West Woodburn and join the A696 just north of Otterburn. On up through Rochester and Byrness to Carter Bar, then down past Jedburgh, St Boswell’s, Lauder on to the Edinburgh by-pass, going around the west side of the city. If you wwnt to see the pics in more detail, click on them. They should enlarge on a new screen.

Covers

2011-10-28T06:00:00.001+01:00

They say covers are vital for selling books. Any books, anywhere, in whatever format. I suppose if you hit on a good one by accident that's great, but since it's such a subjective thing, how do we know what makes a good cover? And is a good cover a cover that will sell numbers of books? Well, in this case, let's say yes.

Those people in the know say that the average person in a bookshop will decide to buy the book within 10-20 seconds. (I can't say I'm one of them, but I don't disbelieve what they claim) It means the cover has a lot to do with it, and the blurb backs it up. So the cover must be eye-catching, and resonate with something within the average reader to get them to pick it up in the first place. Then the blurb must be short and punchy and relevant - ie give a snapshot idea of what the book is about. (And that is so much easier to say than to achieve!)

Publishers, it is claimed, are appealing to something aspirational in readers, too. They want to be identified with the contents of the book, or to be more precise, what they think the contents might be. They say a good cover alone can sell a book. Indeed the reverse might be true - that readers would buy a book in brown paper if they wanted the story enough. I don't suppose the Potter fans would have refused to buy the latest installment because they didn't like the cover.

I had a look at 50 supposedly iconic book covers today, and found only two that really caught my eye. Would these have been the ones I picked up in the bookshop? Who knows! I loaded the French cover inadvertantly because it was paired with the cover I was aiming for, but the longer I look at it, the more I like it, even though I'm not sure how the title translates. "The men who would not love women?" Anyway, I thought the Dragon Tattoo cover, and the old, classic Clockwork Orange cover, both excellent. and at least one of them has stood the test of time.

World Book Night 2

2011-10-26T06:00:00.001+01:00

Follow the link and you'll discover the list of titles involved in April's World Book Night Giveaway. The list contains some books I've read and some I haven't, but I think it is interesting, with something for everyone. I was intrigued to see that they'd included Touching the Void - the book about climbing that still gives me nightmares.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/24/world-book-night-giveaway

The event isn't about authors, it's about readers, and encouraging more readers into reading. Sometimes it seems that reading is a dying art. It also seems to have caught on to something long accepted in the e-book world, namely that a book given away repays and keeps on paying by bringing the reader back to that author's backlist and any titles published in years to come.

If people are not encouraged to read, then in a few years time authors will not have an audience, and that's a sobering thought. So let's get behind the event now, and promote it.

Critiquing

2011-10-24T01:59:00.002+01:00

autumn colours seeping in

I find one thing I don't like about critique groups is that many people in them write first drafts and send them in for critique. Now I think this is maybe expecting too much of your critique partners. Why should they sort out your grammar, correct your spelling, and highlight spacing errors when you can do that yourself? The machine will sort out most of it, if you push the right button and let it get on with it. How hard is that?

Surely the critic comes into his/her own when s/he suggests errors of pacing or that the story line is flagging or in worst cases, simply unbelievable. Or suggests that it would be better if paragraph a) comes after paragraph d) becuse it is more relevant there. But it's hard to spot where improvements can be made when the page is scattered with basic errors, so really, I think the first drafters are doing themselves a disservice when they send rough drafts in for critique.

Also it's nice to be able to mention good points, but sometimes its hard to find any in first drafts. They'd be there in a second or third draft, though, I'll bet.

For your delectation, here's a link to a new book trailer I've made. Have a wander around an old fortified farmhouse at Aydon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyui1kfCd_8

How to Write Fiction

2011-10-21T12:37:00.000+01:00

Adam Fould's thoughts on How to Write Fiction have been printed in the Guardian recently and I have bookmarked them so I can reread them again and again. He quotes some lovely descriptions by famous authors but warns us that we break down reality and reassemble it according to our own thoughts and perceptions every time we write a description.
That was enough to make me stop and re-consider what I've written lately, and I resolved to go back and see what I can improve.

He quotes Flaubert: No matter whether good or bad, it is a delectable thing, writing! not having to be yourself, being able to circulate in amongst the whole creation that you are describing. Today for instance, as a man and as a woman, as lover and mistress both, I have been out riding in a forest on an autumn afternoon, and I was the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words that they spoke to each other and the red sunlight that made them half-close their eyes, eyes that were brimming with love.
Fould's article here is quite long, and if you go to it, you’ll read his analysis of how each description works on more than one level. As an interesting aside, it struck me that Flaubert’s words are not so far removed from Ian Rankin’s description of being an author - quoted on this blog a post or two back.

Evelyn Waugh’s paragraph from his 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust captures typical English weather. Outside, it was soft English weather; mist in the hollows and pale sunshine on the hills; the coverts had ceased dripping, for there were no leaves to hold the recent rain, but the undergrowth was wet, dark in the shadows, iridescent where the sun caught it; the lanes were soggy and there was water running in the ditches.
But there’s method and more than pretty description in those words. Read the article and learn more.
Foulds will be teaching a Guardian Masterclass alongside Sarah Hall on Fiction Writing in London on 28-29 January 2012 for those lucky enough to attend.

Kindle Autumn

2011-10-19T10:00:00.000+01:00

autumn is on its way

Since publishing FAIR BORDER BRIDE, I've taken the plunge and dipped my toe into the Kindle Boards. My introduction has gone through OK, I've been welcomed by nice people and now I'm free to explore the rest of the boards. The trouble is, it's (or they?) (or are?) huge. Where to go first? I'm hoping there'll be a history thread somewhere, but it may take a while to find it. Plus which there's a whole page of rules, which I've printed out and must read through before I jump in.

Here in the north, the weather has taken a turn for the brisk cold we expect in autumn. I went to bed last night with the tip of my nose so cold a healthy dog would be jealous, and this morning dh has turned on the heating for an hour to take the chill off the house. It was so pleasant to have a shower and not freeze the moment I stepped out of it, and to have warm fluffy towels off the radiator rather than the cold, damp, clinging things they've been for the last week or so.

It's a week exactly to our trip to Ullapool and Kylesku in the far northwest of Scotland, and I still have faith that the weather will be the bright, crisp but sunny Indian summer week it often is up there. Now I'm looking at maps and deciding where we'll walk when we're there. Such a pleasant pastime, and with next to no expediture of energy!

Ian Rankin

2011-10-17T20:04:00.000+01:00

In November he'll start to think about the next book, in January he'll begin writing it, deliver it in June, in July it'll be edited, September he'll start doing pre-publication interviews, it'll come out in October and he'll go on the road again.

entry to Prudhoe Castle

A treadmill, then?

But nice treadmill.

"It's a very pleasurable way to spend your time. It's therapeutic, it's cathartic, it's exciting, it's engaging. In real life writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books we're having exciting adventures all the time. I can't think of anything better than that, and it keeps you well balanced because all the shit inside your head goes on paper. I think we'd be troublesome individuals if we didn't get all that shit out our systems."

There was a time when Rankin's name wasn't at the top of the bestseller list. He didn't achieve breakthrough until the eighth Rebus novel (and his 15th book in all), Black and Blue, won the Macallan Gold Dagger for fiction in 1997. And even then he didn't have a bestseller until two years later, with Dead Souls.

"My publishers were taking a punt on me for a long time," he says. "That probably wouldn't happen now. I was having panic attacks, I was driving through the French countryside where we lived at the time, screaming at the top of my voice just to get it out my system. I was waking up in the night with this adrenalin rush like a heart attack. It was a pretty horrible time."

I think he's right that publishers don't hang on to authors who don't sell, or take a chance on a debut author like they used to. But if they don't, how are the new authors going to come through? And do we have fifteen years to get it right? What do you think?

2011-10-15T21:33:00.000+01:00

I’ve finally managed to publish a book through the AmazonKindle programme. FAIR BORDER BRIDE was published briefly in 2009 as Till theDay Go Down, but the publisher went into liquidation very soon afterwards, andreturned my rights to me. It seemed a good idea to give Harry and Alina somesort of life rather than abandon them to oblivion, so here is their story – 5,000words lighter, re-edited and with everything I’ve learned about writing fictionin the intervening three years adding into the final polish.

The setting is Northumberland in 1543. Alina and Harry meet in Corbridge market place andbecause he is working for his father, the Deputy Lord Warden of the West March,he tells her his name is Harry Scott. Alina’s father is at feud with the entirefamily Scott, flings Harry into the dungeon at Aydon Castle and threatens himwith the Leap next day. Alina creeps out of her bed to visit Harry at midnightwhen the castle is quiet.

“Tellme,” he said, before he forgot all practical things in the delight of herpresence. “Your father threatens me with something called the Leap. What isit?”

“Shedipped her head, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. “It’s the ravine,Harry.” She pointed towards the dark bulk of the hall. “On the other side is aravine. It is deep, with the Ay burn at the bottom. Father…he makes prisonersjump from the precipice outside the hall.”

“Ah.” He raised her knuckles to his mouth, and kissed them todispel the shadowy presence of Death looming in the darkness behind him. Heremembered looking into the ravine the night he rode up here. His tongue probedthe cleft between her fingers. She gasped. Harry’s blood sang through his body,and he kissed her knuckles again. “How deep, do you think?”

“Twenty times the height of a man, they say.” She shivered andfrowned as she watched him nuzzle her fingers. “There are rocks and trees…”

“And no one survives?”

Her face crumpled. “Oh, Harry, sometimes they do, but they arebroken, twisted creatures—”

A deep voice sounded from above, and Alina flung up her head.“Matho, please!”

Matho must have agreed, for she turned back to Harry. Her hand hadwarmed in his and when he kissed it once more, her other hand snaked throughthe bars and stroked his face, crept to the back of his neck.

“Ah, Alina,” he murmured. “Would that we had no iron bars betweenus.”

His flesh hardened. If this was his last night on earth, he wantedsome pleasure to beguile his thoughts. He reached both hands through the grilland drew her close against the iron bars and in truth she was not reluctant,even when his hand roamed beneath her cloak, caught a ribbon and her nightgowngaped from neck to waist. His palm found the firm weight and curve of herbreast and nestled around it.”

You can find FAIR BORDER BRIDE on either of the links: http://tiny.cc/g7ddy and http://tiny.cc/930k5

Shadows in the night

2011-10-14T08:52:00.001+01:00

west wing of Prudhoe Castle

"Melissa looked at her watch. It was well past midnight. The sofa was comfortable, but the unaccustomed heat kept her awake. Spending summer in a romantic old water mill in the Dordogne did have disadvantages. When she ran tentative fingers over her flanks, her skin was slick with moisture.The warm breeze from the open window moved through the room, but brought little relief. Crickets chirped so vigorously they might have been sitting on the hearthstone five feet away.
A cold drink would be good.
She scrambled off the sofa and tiptoed across the floorboards, hoping she wouldn’t step on any insect life. With her hands under the kitchen tap, she welcomed the gush of cold water, gulped some from her cupped palm and ran her damp hands over her face.

Fumbling her way through the shadows to the door, she released the latch and stepped outside.That was better. Cool air breathed across her skin. Ignoring the quick rustle of lizards scurrying toward crevices in the old walls, she strolled to the chairs, pale and cold in the moonlight.She sank into one of them, and flinched at the coldness of the plastic against her skin. Stars blinked above the massed ranks of dark trees. A breeze that never reached the valley floor swept across the topmost leaves of the tall trees in the meadow and produced the soft susurration in the air that was already familiar to her.
Rory slept in the big bed on the other side of the wall. He did not like their current sleeping arrangements. The tightening of his mouth, the flexing of his jaw muscles had shown that, and said very clearly that he’d let her have her way but he was not the kind of man who gave up easily. Had his pride suffered when she refused to share his bed? He had certainly been surprised. Would he try and persuade her, or sulk until she gave in?It had been a good decision not to let Rory sleep on the sofa for then she would have felt beholden to him. Much better that she owed him neither gratitude nor thanks at this point.
She stroked her thighs. Already the slickness dried from her skin. A wisp of long grass whisked along the flagstones, breathed across her foot and vanished. Rory had shown her a shed snakeskin as a warning not to be frightened if she saw the owner one day. The fragile, almost translucent skin had been trapped between the stones of the bolly and the old drain not four feet from where she sat.A cold breeze wandered by. Melissa hugged herself against the sudden chill. Perhaps this was a crazy idea after all. Flickers of movement caught her eye.
For no reason, her heart thudded in her chest. With her teeth pressing on her lower lip, she stared at the western end of the bolly where one of the four oak pillars supporting the tiled roof stood out sharp and clear in the moon's glow.Beyond them, the shrubs and rose bushes were gray against the dusty, moonlit ribbon of the drive. Nothing moved. She heard nothing but the soft sound of the breeze, yet her heart bounced faster, as if she were in danger.
Muscles tense, she sat poised, ready to run.
The shadows made it difficult to see anything. The blackness moved and twitched close in against the house wall, less than ten feet away. A pale shifting blur morphed into hands and a face. Melissa’s fingers clung to the chair arms while she strained to see through the darkness. Hair lifted on the back of her neck and goose bumps sprang on her arms. She stared at two pale blurs, one above the other, moving very close together. Sure it must be some young couple seeking privacy, she opened her mouth to call out. But some instinct held her rigid and silent. What if they weren't real?Her heart beat so loudly that whoever lurked by the wall must surely hear it. She forced herself to inhale slowly and quietly.
Her heartbeat slowed a little.
The air around her was cold.
It’s always cold when—she slammed down on the thought about ghosts before it formed in her mind. She looked at the space between herself and the door, and the door and the dark, shifting shape.She could reach the door. She had to.The chair scraped across the flagstones and drowned the slap of her bare feet as she hurtled into the mill, slammed the door and rattled the bolt home.
Flexed from the hips, palms braced against the half glass door, she waited, mouth open, panting. Through the mottled glass and the wrought iron Perigourdine goose that guarded it, moonlight lit the grass beyond the bolly. Nothing moved. Her breathing slowed.
She remembered she’d seen a baseball bat by the door and groped for it without taking her gaze from the door. The smooth wooden shaft came comfortingly to her hand.Something creaked behind her. Melissa whirled on a sharp indrawn breath. The bat cocked and ready, she watched the door to the hall open."

A chillingtale, written with humour and drenched in the sights and perfumes of the ruralDordogne, a must-read for those who like a romance with a ghostly twist.

an excerpt from my book SHADOWS, available now on Kindle.

Lawful trods

2011-10-12T14:47:00.000+01:00

Virginia Creeper in autumn

If the trod crossed the border, there were rules to ensure that it was a legal pursuit. An agreement drawn up in 1563 describes "a lawfull Trodd with Horn and Hound, with Hue and Cry and all other accustomed manner of fresh pursuit".

According to Walter Scott, who immersed himself in Border Lore, and possibly invented certain touches, the pursuer was obliged to carry a lighted turf on his lance-point to signify his good intentions and lawful pursuit. It strikes me that a burning turf would not have lasted long, and might quite easily have shattered into a million bits as the rider's pony scrambled up and down hills and hopped across ditches and streams and boggy bits.

He was also supposed to report to the first person he met over the border, or to ask at the first village and seek assistance there. Early rules directed the pursuer to sseek out some local worthy and invite him to join the trod as witness that all was as it should be. I can imagine that this rule was flouted on more occasions than not, but actually impeding a trod was a serious offence. In England in the 1550s, refusal to follow a trod was punishable by death. Later this reduced to seven days imprisonment and a fine of three shillings and four pence.
If the reivers were caught, they were returned to face the Warden's justice. Sometimes they were killed on the spot, especially if caught 'red-hand', ie " in the deede doinge". Lynchings happened, without a doubt, but how common they were is unknown. It brings to mind the old Wild West films we used to watch when films had a story instead of computer graphics and impossible action.

Hot Trod, anyone?

2011-10-10T06:00:00.000+01:00

A Hot trod is a lawful pursuit of reivers and maybe it’stime to talk about them since they figure in two of my books. Trods were peculiar to the borderlands between Scotland and England. The whole area, known as the Marches, was divided into administrative blocks, with three on each side of the border; an East, Middle and West March. Each March had aWarden, who maintained law and order within that area. The East Marches werethe smallest of the six and glared at each other across the Tweed from Carhamto Berwick. Pleasant farmed land, with the Tweed easily forded. Armiesof both nations marched endlessly across the the Eastern Marches, looting as they went.

The Middle Marches fronted each other across the Cheviots,and the crime rate of the two regions was legend. The wide, desolate hills werecriss-crossed by reivers’ trails and one of the Wardens declared it an“unchristened country.”

The West Marches contained the Debateable Land, disputedover by both nations, and pursued reivers disappeared into it whenever dangerthreatened to get too close. The people of Carlisle livedwithin easy riding distance of the Liddesdale hordes, but seemed to suffer lessthan the English Middle March because it was well defended, with a string ofcastles and fortresses that included Naworth, mentioned on this blog a week ortwo back. Also the broad Eden, like the treacherous Solway tide, was a genuinebarrier.

Once raided by reivers, a man could complain to the Wardenand gain justice that way. He could wait and plan a retaliatory raid, whichmost did because they often got their goods back with interest. Or he could decideon a pursuit. This was strictly legal, even if the trail took them across the border. Scott named it “the fatal privilege” because it enshrined the rightto recover one’s property (usually hoofed and alive) by force, and to deal (usually nastily) withthe thieves themselves. It had to take place within six days of the raid. Iffollowed immediately, it was a hot trod; if followed later, a cold trod.

English UK

2011-10-07T11:46:00.000+01:00

Strange things are happening in the editing world. A friendhas recently come up against her present editor changing every ‘on to’ to‘onto’. Many years ago a copy editor would not allow ‘onto’ in any circumstanceand replaced them all with ‘on to’.

Naworth Castle courtyard

It is rather like the 'in to' and 'into' argument. There isa difference. The window was open so the cat climbed in to get his milk andfell into a bucket carelessly left there. I’m sure you can all see thedifference.

Something my American friends are always correcting in mychapters is when I use 'different to'. They insist it should be 'differentthan.' Now, if enough people tell you a thing, you begin to believe it. So Ilooked up the grammar books and found that typical British usage is 'differentto' when it introduces a clause and 'different from' when preceding a noun orpronoun. British usage doesn't include 'different than' at all.

I know it is unwise to generalise, and it is possible thatall editors are not a) American or b)young twenty-somethings, (as if that issomehow a reason or an excuse, though I’ve it put forward as both!) but it is ashame that British English seems to be slowly caving in to American English.Why do British newspaper journalists and tv presenters think it is ‘cool’ touse the language of another culture? Why have I used the shorthand language ie ‘cool’,rather than think out a phrase that will describe what is meant by the slangphrase ‘cool’? Can it be that I am a) lazy or b)already indoctrinated?

Is grammar not taught in schools anymore? Have the teachersthemselves got confused? Or is it the herd instinct, the reason that the lessconfidant follow the more confidant by adopting their style, their way ofspeaking? Food for thought, I think.

Relationship Fiction

2011-10-05T09:53:00.000+01:00

W H Smith recently declared that from the middle of October it will no longer use "Women's Fiction" on promotional material in their stores. Evidently the company received complaints from two female shoppers who found the label condescending and offensive.Two things pop into mind - what are they going to use instead, and I had no idea just two complaints would change something in their store.

There is a rumour that "relationship fiction" is to be the new banner. People in the business of selling books say Women's Fiction and Chick Lit has always been about how women deal with relationships rather than the bigger issues dealt with in other types of fiction. In many ways I have to agree, but it isn't always simply getting a man that makes the story. There are complications that affect whole families, but I guess that still comes under the relationship banner. I suppose the smart thing would be to shelve the books as libraries used to do - a simple A-Z author sequence whch avoids all the cute headings.

People like the headings. They don't want to spend the time browsing through forty thousand books every time they want something to read. And I suspect that most women like the heading Women's Fiction. And anyway, do you think a new banner is going to change the type of book that is taken off the shelves? I doubt it. But it will be interesting to watch the struggle.

Endless chick-lit

2011-10-03T10:54:00.004+01:00

Still the talk goes on about how the women's commercial fiction genre is inrecession with the genre's household names watching their sales fall. Jodi Picoult's name crops up in several articles, and though I wouldn’thave classed her as a chick-lit author she certainlycomes in under women’s commercial fiction.

The facts are plain. Her book Picture Perfect (Hodder Paperback, June 2010)sold 238,832 copies in its first two months on shelves, but with Harvestingthe Heart (Hodder Paperback, June 2011) sales fell by almost 50% to just120,235 copies.

I’ve read a couple of Picoult’s titles and have heard her speak at HexhamLiterary Festival. The first few titles I enjoyed, but it’s an odd kind ofenjoyment when the characters are so tortured, and to be honest I can’t face havingmy emotions wrenched about any more. Perhaps other readers feel the same, andPicoult’s vogue has passed. This may be the answer in general. After all, howmany titles in a similar genre can you read before ennui sets in? By the time I’dploughed my way through all the James Bond stories, I think I’d be heartilysick of them and wouldn’t want another. I’ve read a good few Nora Roberts butnow pass them by on the shelves because I know how she develops her charactersand ties up her stories. Perhaps the charm and success of Jane Austen is thathers is a limited output, so small that the reader is left wanting more. Hadshe written twenty-five novels, we’d maybe tire of her writing too.

Anonymous

2011-10-01T11:11:00.003+01:00

Can I take a moment aside from true blog posts to say that I receive an awful lot of Anonymous comments, and that I delete them? I also receive a lot of spam, and distinguishing a genuine Anonymous from the sneaky spam is difficult. So a long time ago I made a rule to delete every comment that didn't have an identity attached to it.
Sorry, but that's the way it is. If you really want to comment, tell me who you are.

Hagg Bank

2011-09-30T10:30:00.000+01:00

Took this pic during my bike ride yesterday. The river Tyne near Hagg Bank. Fishermen, walkers, bikers, we're all out in force. We're having days of wonderful sunshine and digging out summer togs again. Got to make the most of it, as our lovely Indian Summer is due to end with a bang at the weekend. Sigh. In my study, work goes on apace. Never know which task to light on as I start the day. I'm re-formatting a story in the hope that I can follow all the instructions to publish it via Amazon, I'm supposed to be writing the first draft of Victorian Beauty, and also adding "sparkle" to Treason. I'm not a multi-faceted person as far as tasks go, and whatever I select at the beginning of the day is usually what I stick with for the rest of it. At the moment, the re-formatting is winning the race. Should the work ever get to Amazon, it will be a couple of thousand words lighter than when it was published as Till the Day Go Down and that will be a good thing. I think I've learned how to tighten prose now. TTDGD was written 2007, and I've learned a lot since then.

Chick-lit under fire

2011-09-28T10:39:00.000+01:00

There's a new journalistic attack on women writers, this time aimed at chick-lit - http://tinyurl.com/6eubzox - and it's annoying a lot of readers and writers. It isn't a genre I read, and nor do I write it, so I suppose I don't feel much pressure. But for those who do, it must be upsetting, so why do the journalists continue to put out these bitter little peices of journalistic crap?
Usually it's Romance that gets beaten with the sarcastic stick. Can it be that these journalists actually envy the writers who've made it to publishing a book? I expect they'll hide behind the 'my editor made me do it' line, and s/he'll say it's done because it sells newspapers.
It must be a desperate situation for many journalists these days. News is no longer confined to newspapers. Sometimes it isn't even part of newspapers. 24 hour rolling news on television, radio and all the other devices that impart information at the click of a button have made the old fashioned news journalist redundant. I suppose those who are left must feel the pressure to keep coming up with some gossip or pseudo news piece which they claim they claim the public ought to know about. Picking on women writers is easy. No one sues the journalist or the newspaper, and maybe it's time someone did.

Another life?

2011-09-26T22:42:00.000+01:00

Shiny new Viking helmet

It may have been a Roman soldier during an event day at Wallington showing the schoolkids how to fight with a quarter staff. Or it may have been a day when a Viking Warrior was stalking the grassy sward. I really can't remember, and it isn't that important. It might even be me, visible in the reflection, taking the photograph of the shiny helmet. Sometimes these events promise more than they deliver, and both these days were of that kind. Maybe only kids were supposed to be there. It was during the school holidays, after all.

It struck me last week that I have two books, once published by Quaestor, but no longer available unless there are a few copies still floating around on Amazon and the like. I should do something with them. I have the rights back. So I'm investigating Kindle Direct Publishing, and currently tieing myself in knots trying to unscramble the formatting on the only document I have. It is a valuable lesson - I wish I'd kept a clean Word Document copy for just such an eventuality. It probably seems a bit like death-wishing your precious work, but these things happen. Publishing companies go to the wall with astonishing regularity these days. It's as well to be prepared.

Online chatter

2011-09-23T16:19:00.000+01:00

My first foray into online chat did not go well. Following the link, I was told I needed to install Java on my PC. I did so, after much humming and hahing, because if I haven't missed it up to now, chances are I don't really need it.

Whittle Dene

So, sat up late, waiting. Actually, I got a lot of PC tidying-up done in the hours between 10.30 and 2am. All those e-mails in the sent file I'd forgotten to delete, the ones I didn't need in the In Box, they all went. I cleaned up my PR file in preparation for uploading vital information re my newest book Shadows, and finally it was time.
There was no one there but me, but then, I was early. Over the next fifteen minutes, other names popped up in a little file to the side of the screen. They had avatars beside their name, but I had only a grey silhouette. I explored the options file, and provided myself with a red-headed avatar - not that I'm a redhead, but it looked attractive. Then came the big moment - I tried to speak.
Typed in a greeting, and a small box appeared on the screen with my sentence in it, but with every other letter missing. And the box itself shuddered and jittered as if it was in an icy wind. One person must have seen my message, for that person replied. But that was the best I could do. The box shuddered itself into a frenzy, the screen froze, there were no instructions and no matter what I did, I could not communicate. I could read the comments made by other folk, and saw that Cutting and Pasting was not functioning, which meant people couldn't use what they'd prepared earlier.
Thirteen minutes later, I logged out. Enough is enough. Not sure about keeping Java.

Twitter type woes

2011-09-21T10:41:00.000+01:00

Have you ever wondered how successful your blog is? If anyone every reads it? There's a link that grades your website or blog here: http://websitegrader.com/

Naworth, sw corner of the present day garden

PR is a huge part of an aspiring author's life these days, and can easily take up more time than actually writing if you subscrbe to Twitter and Facebook and the many other things that I've heard of in a vague sort of way but haven't investigated because if I did I'd never get any writing done. And I don't have a full-time (nor even a part time) job to absorb most of my waking hours! Pity the poor writer who does.
Is it really necessary? Must I understand RSS Graffiti, Bebo and Good Reads to be a success? I gave up on MySpace a long time ago, but it seems there a many others springing up to take its place. Sometimes Facebook is fun, and its a good way of keeping in touch with other writers. I enjoy doing my blog. But that's it for me. If my stories aren't good enough to stand on their own two flat little feet, then so be it.

2011-09-19T10:33:00.001+01:00

Gatehouse at Naworth

This week I'm going to try my hand at joining in an online chat. The third Wednesday of every month, Sapphire Blue, who published Shadows for me, holds a chat: here It is scheduled to begin at 9pm EST on Wednesday 21st September, which means it will be around 2am here in the UK. Now, I don't expect many UK people joining in at that time of the morning, unless they're insommniacs or shift workers, but the rest of the world, especially my pals in Australia, might like to join in.

I only hope I can manage the technology to join them myself! The chat will be as entertaining as we make it and as far as I know, there are no set topics laid down.

Austen re-written?

2011-09-16T09:52:00.003+01:00

The book pages are full of publisher HarperCollins commissioning Joanna Trollope to write a contemporary reworking of Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. It is to be the first of a "major" new series in which modern authors reimagine Austen’s books in a contemporary setting.

HarperFiction publishing director Louisa Joyner came up with the idea after reading a comparison between Trollope and Austen – Trollope herself has said that "comparisons with Jane Austen make me twitch. She is a Great: I am a Good - on a good day".

"TV adaptations of Austen all focus on one reading of her: they are all about the romance. But actually she was such an acute social commenter – and economics were such an important part of it," said Joyner. This led to wondering how a contemporary novelist would deal with the stories.
She describes the new series as a "conversation" between Austen and today's novelists. This is no attempt to better Jane. “It's a respectful conversation, and if it ends up with people talking more about Austen and Trollope, then that's a good thing. It's not a competition. It is a literary celebration, and all debate is good."

John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London, said the project was part of "a time-honoured literary genre". "In the 18th century they used to call it imitation," he said. "It's an old tradition - Pope did Horace, Dr Johnson did Juvenal, now Trollope is doing Austen ... I think it's fine. It always works best if the people who enjoy it most know the original - that's the test."
HarperCollins is currently in talks with other "authors of global literary significance" about the remaining five Austen novels. Joyner would not comment on suggestions that Stephen King might produce an interesting take on Northanger Abbey, or that an Ian Rankin crime twist to Emma could prove fun.
Now the last two suggestions could be interesting, don't you think?

Amazon Reviews

2011-09-14T11:20:00.001+01:00

Any author must run a gauntlet of “gatekeepers” who judge whether the work has any artistic and commercial merit. Literary agents, editors, bookshop and chain store buyers, critics and reviewers guard the gates marked Success.The Internet is changing this. Today, publishing is vey much dependent on the electronic community. For some lucky authors, nothing stands between them and the reader but a server.

Outside Naworth's gates

Off to the side, however, ready with fingers poised over the keyboard, lurks A Reviewer. Once upon a time, critics were professional journalists who gave us their considered views through newspapers and the like. Not today. Now anyone can write a review and put it up on the Amazon website, and some come with all the speed and damaging power of a Djokovic backhand.

Word of mouth has always been touted as the best promotional exercise in selling books, and was always largely a matter of luck. If people liked a book, they told their friends, who read it and told their friends. Now we read the reviews of strangers and wonder if we should take notice or not. If their views on life are different to ours, its likely that we won't share their reading taste, but how are we to know? They may be the author's best buddy, their doting auntie Joan or their worst enemy. We've all seen the title that has ten good reviews, and then tucked in among them, will be the one review that trashes the work. Follow that reviewers name, and you may well find that they trash every book they read.

Amazon.com is aware of the problem and has created a badge system to identify a cadre of reviewers who can be trusted. Go to Amazon, click on any recently published book and page down beyond the "official reviews" to Customer Reviews. If the reviewer identifies himself as regularly reviewing or blogging about specific genres, it is possible that this person’s judgment is reliable and enlightening, and more importantly, co-incides with your reading tastes. It’s worth your time to click on the link that says “See all my reviews,” or on the badge beneath the reviewers name.

Naworth's White Lady

2011-09-12T13:28:00.002+01:00

entrance in the south facade

Some say a ‘ White Lady’ haunts Naworth.

Gatehouse

The spirit, so they say, is of a girl who was seduced by Lord Dacre. She became pregnant and upon discovering Lord Dacre’s rank and social standing realised they would never be together. She threw herslf into a stream on his wedding day and drowned. The body was discovered by Lord Dacre, his bride to be and the dead girl’s mother. The girl’s mother put a curse upon Lord Dacre, resulting in his death and that of his heirs.
The trick is to know which Lord Dacre was the culprit. In about 1315 Randolf de Dacre married Margaret of Multon (having first abducted her) and the Dacre name became associated with Lanercost Priory as well as Naworth. 172 years later Thomas Dacre, 2nd Baron Gilsland, married Elizabeth Greystoke, gaining the title 1st Baron Greystoke. Thomas would have been twenty at the time. A typical age, some would say, for a little amorous adventuring.
In addition to his legitimate offspring, Thomas, the 2nd Baron, also has an illegitimate son, Capt. Thomas Dacre, from whom the Lanercost Dacres are descended. In 1538 Henry VIII and Cromwell dissolved the monasteries, and Lanercost Priory was given to the Dacre family who had served him so well at Flodden. The main branch of the family continued to live at Naworth Castle, and the Lanercost Dacres took up residence in the west range of the monastic buildings in what is now known as Dacre Hall. They created a dwelling of some style.
Thomas's grandson, Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Gilsland and 3rd Baron Greystoke married twice, firstly to Elizabeth Neville, and the second time to Elizabeth Leyburne. When he died he left a son, George, and three daughters, Anne, Mary and Elizabeth.
It seems it took some time for the lady's curse to work on the family, and it has to be said that though George died young in a fall from a vaulting horse, the girls all married a sprig of the Howard family and went on to produce offspring. So it was also a rather selective curse.
If you believe in such things.

Naworth history

2011-09-09T10:56:00.000+01:00

The courtyard looking west

There may have been a castle at Naworth as early as 1270. Certainly the house was crenellated by Ranulph Dacre in 1335, during the reign of Edward III. The Dacre family grew increasingly powerful by marrying wealthy, landed heiresses. One such mariage was that of Thomas, Lord Dacre of the North, who married Elizabeth de Greystoke.
The present castle consists of a courtyard with towers at the corners. The two tallest towers flank the south entrance range. Once it was an impressive irregular quadrangular fortress with a high curtain wall containing small turrets in the centre and on the angles, dominated by two, five storey towers.
Today the 16th century courtyard still has its yett and is protected by the remains of a barmkin wall, a gatehouse and a squat tower flanking the ditch.

Northeast corner

In 1513 Thomas, Lord Dacre played an important role at the battle of Flodden, where the English, under Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (later 2nd Duke of Norfolk) inflicted a catastrophic defeat upon the Scottish nation. Thomas Dacre was awarded lands around Lanercost, and with that new wealth extended Naworth. He built the whole of the south and east wings including the 100ft Great Hall, and what is now known as Lord William’s Tower. His arms are displayed over the detached entrance gateway.

Thomas Dacre was also Warden of The West March for Henry VIII, and provided loyal service to the crown until his death in 1525. Unfortunately for the Dacre family, in 1560 the then Lord Dacre died, leaving a widow, three daughters and a young son called George. Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, Queen Elizabeth's cousin, married the widowed Lady Dacre, and arranged to marry his three sons to her three daughters. Young George was killed in a fall from a vaulting horse and the vast Dacre estates which covered great tracts of the north of England - including 70,000 acres of the Barony of Gilsland, lands in Cumberland including Greystoke and Dacre, 20,000 acres around Morpeth and 30,000 acres in Yorkshire - now part of Castle Howard estate, all came under the control of the Howard family. Following the death of his wife, he then rather foolishly became embroiled in a plot to marry Mary Queen of Scots. Thus Thomas Howard, like his father before him, went to the scaffold and was executed in 1572.

Naworth

2011-09-08T11:27:00.000+01:00

Can you see the squirrel? Perched on top of the helmet? I'd love to know the reason its there. After browsing around a little, we ventured through the doorway and into a long passageway which brought us out into a sunny courtyard.

This would be the inner bailey, and the heart of the castle. Buildings range round it on all four sides, with a bigger gateway to my left. People are heading to a small doorway tucked underneath a set of steps with a right angle in them, which must lead up into the grand hall. Today only the antique dealers are allowed up there. So we step into another doorway, and I really got a sense of stepping into rather than through, for the worn flag stones were a little below the threshold. Notices warned of uneven floors.

Gaunt stone walls, odd shaped doors, even odder internal windows without glass so from the corridor we could look into a couple of dark rooms taken over by the inevitable coffee and scone cafe. Then we took the stone stairs and arrived at the start of the antiques fair. Lots of stalls, with eight foots screens forming small rooms and spaces but unfortunately hiding a good deal of the castle structure! Lots of lovely things on display but the least expensive things we found were copies of John Speed's early maps - for £55. There was a wonderful sculpture of a green bronze dragon with gold-tipped horns and claws, perhaps three foot tall, and priced at £8,000, lots of jewellery and glossy 18th and 19th century furniture.

Antiques and Old things

2011-09-07T10:05:00.001+01:00

Naworth Castle

On Sunday, which luckily happened to be a beautiful day, we drove west to Naworth Castle near Brampton. Normally it is not open to visitors, but Sunday was the last day of a Three Day Antique and Fine Art Fair, which is not the kind of event that regularly has me beating at the doors. But since my wip features both castle and owner, I couldn't stay away.

So, through the archway, once the gate in a curtain wall that no longer exists, straining my neck back to look up at the armourial bearings on the wall above. I would swear there's a squirrel seating atop the helmet. Going through, its more of a tunnel than an archway, and about ten or twelve feet long. There's a small wooden door on the left, and a glance to the left show that there was once access to what was presumably a guard room overlooking the entry.

From here we can look up at the facade of the castle proper, and see one or two people disappearing through the doorway that has a smaller shield set in the lintel. I notice how different the stone is in colour to the stone in the eastern side of the country. This is a delicious soft red shading down to brown and pink and grey. The grey reflects the sunlight, so the overall effect is light, pretty and fawnish pink.

Will be continued tomorrow. (I haven't checked yet with this new version of blogger, but I hope clicking on the pictures gives an enlarged view.)

Changes in Book Chain

2011-09-05T11:11:00.001+01:00

Sorry about the weird colours yesterday. I got tangled up in the new version of Blogger.
Today I won't touch a thing!
I hear Waterstones has been sold and the new MD says they will be no more 3 for 2 offers in store. I took advantage of the offer only once when there were 3 books I really wanted. Must say something for my will power over a decade! Most people seemed to get sucked in when they really only wanted one book, but could be tempted by the second and didn't care about the third, but it was on offer and what the hell, it was free anyway. A bit like the BOGOF examples in the superstores, where people buy and then complain that they didn't use all the product before it passed its sell-by date. Why buy if they didn't plan to use it all? Seems weird to me. What's to stop them blanching and freezing vegetables or making fruit crumbles and freezing them?

But to get back to books - it will be interesting to see what changes the new head, Daunt, brings to the book chain. He is thinking of selling campaign books (I presume he means those that publishers pay to have pushed in store) at £3, £5 and, if I've remembered correctly, £7. Few books I read are priced anywhere near £3 or even £6. More often they're £6.99 or £7.99, occasionally £10.99 for the larger format. So any book priced at £8.99 will have to be sold at £7 (or less) if it is to be pushed. Otherwise it will go and sit on the shelves with all the rest. It's the rest of the deal that is interesting - will publishers have to bear the reduced price and still pay the store? Must check a few publishers blogs to find out.
(The pic is carriage rides on the Gibside Estate, a National Trust property)

UK Publishing

2011-09-02T11:16:00.001+01:00

Snippets from Lloyd Shepherd’s article (but please check out the Guardian30^th august and read the whole thing. It’s well worth it.

“Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later –a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, televisionchannels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed– 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last10 years.

The standard discount on the recommended retail price of a book in 2001stood at 17.6%. In 2010 it was 26.7%.

Last year UK consumer publishing drew in sales of £1.7bn, up 36% on 2001.Adult fiction saw an increase of 44%, to £476m; and young adult and children'sfiction, realm of all those pesky copiers and pirateers and downloaders, sawsales more than double to £325m.

Up to the week ending 13 August (2011), overall sales were down almost 6% on2010 in volume terms, and just over 4% in value." (He says these figuresdon't include e-books)

"In May this year, Amazon announced that, for thefirst time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback andhardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often)sales of print books were still increasing.

The average cost to the consumer of an adult fiction book in2010 is only 30p less than in 2001. That figure will be higher wheninflation is accounted for, but it's not slashed-and-burned; it means a fictionbook still sold for £6.11 in 2010, on average.

in Amazonia, Kindle versions of new books are outsellinghardback versions - at similar prices.

authors are not seeing a sudden collapse in their incomes. The Society ofAuthors did a survey in 2000 that showed the average annual figure was £16,600;only 5% of authors earned over £75,000; 75% earned less than £20,000. A morerecent survey, done by the Authors Licensingand Collecting Society, came up with very similar figures.

Membership of the Society of Authors passed 9,000 people for the first timesince the Society was formed in 1884." (This confirms what I've thoughtfor a while now - that a lot more people are trying to get published. It's adepressing thought. I wonder what the figures were when Heyer and Plaidy ruledthe book world?)

"There has been a steady increase in the number of book titlespublished in the UK, from almost 110,000 in 2001 to just over 150,000 in2010." (I wonder how many of those are self-published, and how many aree-books?)

Sackcloth and Ashes

2011-09-01T15:08:00.003+01:00

Scanning the Bookseller today, I found this link about author Lloyd Shephard and ended up reading the whole article in the Guardian -

"This time last year, I was metaphorically invited to the only party I've ever wanted to be seen at. My first novel, The English Monster, was picked up by an agent, and then by a publisher, Simon and Schuster. It hits the streets in March 2012.

I've made it, I thought to myself as I clutched my invite to the most exclusive set of all. I'm going to be a published author.

So imagine my surprise - nay, dismay - to discover that publishing's streets were not paved with gold, but stalked by the anxious, the gloomy, the suicidal.

"Publishing's dead!" shouted men in sackcloth on Bloomsbury street corners. I had arrived at the party, but the coats were being handed out, the drink had dried up and the hostess had collapsed.

So I asked myself (somewhat desperately, positively naively): are things really that bad? What is the actual state of book publishing in Britain? Can writers really only look forward to a life of penury? Or should I stick my head in the sand, if only to deaden the sound of commissioning editors weeping into their lattes?

Follow the link - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/30/death-books-exaggerated - it's well worth reading, for both aspiring and published authors.

Weapons

2011-08-30T08:00:00.004+01:00

The word arquebus, (sometimes spelled harquebus, harkbut or hackbut from the Dutch word haakbus, meaning "hook gun" or "hook tube," refers to an early muzzle-loaded firearm used during the 15th to 17th centuries. The Germans knew it as Hakenbüchse, or haquebute, the Italians as archibugio; which gave arquebuse (French), arcabuz (Spanish), arcabus (Portuguese) and arquebus (English).

The caliver, an improved version of the arquebus, was introduced in the early 16th century. The word is derived from the English corruption of calibre as this gun was of standard bore, increasing combat effectiveness as troops could load bullets that would fit their guns (before, they would have to modify shot to fit, force it in, or cast their own before the battle).

In the early 16th century, the term "arquebus" had a confusing variety of meanings. Some writers used it to denote any matchlock shoulder gun, referring to light versions as caliver and heavier pieces fired from a fork rest as musket. Others treated the arquebus and caliver synonymously, both referring to the lighter, forkless shoulder-fired matchlock.

As the 16th century progressed, the term arquebus came to be clearly reserved for the lighter forkless weapon. When the wheel-lock was introduced, wheel-lock shoulder arms came to be called arquebuses, while lighter, forkless matchlock and flintlock shoulder weapons continued to be called calivers.

The arquebus was used against enemies wearing steel-plate armour, standard in European combat from about 1400 until the middle of the 17th century. Plate usually stopped an arquebus ball at long range but at close range often pierced the armor of knights and other heavy cavalry. Good quality in both gun and armour was vital. The arquebus led to the development of thicker plate armour, and its final retirement.

Tools of War

2011-08-26T10:51:00.006+01:00

Research fascinates me. Right now I'm thinking myself back into the sixteenth century and it's a wonderful opportunity to hunt down obscure names and places on the internet.
Many things have to be considered. By the fifteenth century cannon had improved, but they were still inaccurate and unreliable, as likely to explode and kill their 'handlers' as the enemy. They were unwieldly and could not be fired more than perhaps seven times a day because they grew too hot. Handguns were in use, but longbowmen, foot soldiers with pikes and heavy cavalry units were still the ones who won the battles.

By the 1400s brick was the coming building material, and there are some splendid castles made of brick. By the time the Wars of the Roses were over, ideas filtering in from Italy affected the architecture of England. By Elizabeth's time, castle building was over. Some were altered and redesigned as stately homes.

Handguns became more efficient with the matchlock pistol towards the end of the fifteenth century. Renamed an arquebus, it had a short wooden butt designed to rest against the shoulder. Cannon became lighter, and thus more mobile. With these new tools, the old accepted methods of warfare had to change.

Some castles were inhabited, besieged, felled and restored well into the seventeenth century. Some are still used today as family homes, but others became prisons and storerooms. Yet others fell into disrepair and their stone was spirited away by those anxious to rebuild a fallen barn or delapidated farmhouse. For a period of three, perhaps four hundrd years, castles were the most important defensive building in a region. With Henry VIII, who changed so many things, castles morphed into stately homes, and forts and barracks were built to house soldiers. The last battle on English soil is generally accepted as the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, though Cumbria claims a skirmish involving a hundred dead as the English chased Bonnie Prince Charlie back over the border in 1745, and some claim the Falklands as 'English soil.'

Critiquing

2011-08-24T13:18:00.007+01:00

France is no more than a fond memory now. From my bed I could look out on this secluded patio, and in two strides I could be out there in the baking hot sunshine.
Back at home, I have finally caught up. E-mails are under control, crit group duties completed, bills all paid, store cupboard stocked up, all that miserable washing and ironing out of the way. The biggest bugbear of holidays for me is the laundry work on returning home.

Best of all, I seem to have got back into the writing routine. My latest is called Victorian Beauty, and I had to do a swift re-vamp of my heroine, who had got out-of-control-nosy over the hero. Critters complained they didn't like her any more, and at first I couldn't see it, until Mirella explained how it would only take a little reworking, a sentence or two, to make the whole thing take on a different slant - and then Mel would be acceptable.
I saw the light, and did as Mirella suggested. Even I like Mel better now! Just goes to show how easy it is to change a character's motivation, or make their actions believeable. But until my crit partners told the truth, I'd thought everything was fine with the story as it was. So the thought of the day is: be truthful, kind and constructive when critiquing someone's work. They need to know when it doesn't work, but don't need battering over the head about it!

Is writing a skill

2011-08-22T15:09:00.004+01:00

Is writing a skill that can be taught?

Philip Hensher says: Yes, I think so. I think you can teach writing in the same way you can teach cabinet making. I think you can’t teach somebody to be a great writer, you can’t teach somebody with no aptitude whatsoever for writing how to write. On the other hand, you can teach people how a character can be constructed, teach people how to improve their writing. But you can’t turn somebody from Katie Price into Alan Hollinghurst by the sheer power of your pedagogy.
I love that last line!

Two acclaimed novelists - also friends - shared a stage to discuss their new works. Alan Hollinghurst’s latest novel, The Stranger’s Child, is the eagerly-awaited follow-up to The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2004. Philip Hensher combines writing novels with journalism and teaching creative writing at Exeter University. His latest book, King of the Badgers, is set in a fictional Devon town loosely based on Topsham in Devon, where he currently lives. They delivered a masterclass at the (Daily) Telegraph Ways With Words Festival on how to write fiction.
An extract of what they said can be read: http://tinyurl.com/5wwbbpl

Angels and ghosts?

2011-08-19T15:27:00.004+01:00

There's an interesting article for anyone who writes for teens in the Bookseller last week - here - but it seems its a complex genre for writers.

I've just caught up with the film Twilight though the book was published in 2006 and already publishers are thinking the teen vamp thing is already passe. To be honest about the film - I hope the book was better. The premise is engaging with its teen focus of boy-vamp meets human-girl and they fall for each other, because all the conflict you'll ever need is right there. He can never trust himself not to 'take her over' and she insists she trusts him absolutely. But the boy-hero in the film made me laugh with his red lipstick, dark eye make-up and amazing ability to skim through the treetops and run up tree trunks like an ant. The acting was abysmal and the second half had the soundtrack out of synch with the actors' mouths. Distracting to say the least. (Rant over.)

The teen publishing market is now thinking that the next big thing may well be ghosts and angels. Now there's a though to conjure with for a moment. But if any of you are writing for the teen market, which now has female readers up to thirty waiting eagerly for the next book, forget vampires, and think ghosts instead.
What motivates the under thirties? Can it be that the success of Harry Potter, Twilight and the like has encouraged these people that the teens have the best stories?
They're original stories, certainly - one of the things I loved about the Harry Potter concept was the brilliant imagination that conjured up things like the map that showed who was walking around Hogwarts at night, the punishment pen that wrote his lines on his hand and the Room of Requirement...what kind of a mind thinks up such things?
I'm not sure there's much to be found in the womens' fiction shelves these days that can match match such good storytelling. What do the rest of you think?

Dated blogs

2011-08-17T09:36:00.004+01:00

This article in the Bookseller is aimed at website owners, but many of the pointers apply equally well to bloggers. Bookseller Thankfully it recommends photographs, and mentions that awards and reviews are a good thing to include. It also recommends a Buy Button as everyone is buying things online these days. Sadly, it recommends Twitter and Facebook links.

(Even me. My beloved laptop cracked a hinge during our last days in France, which made it vulnerable to complete extinction. DH has just told me he has found new hinges for my particluar model (after three days of searching on the web) and do I want him to order them? I leap to accept his offer. £20 seems OK to have my VA10 back in action.)

Returning to my original subject, I don't think I've ever got to grips with either of those social networks. I'm there, I'm registered, but often stare at the screen and wonder what in my life is worth putting on the page. That I had an egg for breakfast or will have roast duck for dinner is hardly going to set the world alight, yet that's what some people put out there for everyone to read. Stalkers must be delighted!
Still, the article in the Bookseller
is worth reading, and it is making me feel that perhaps it's time I looked at my dear old blog with a re-vamp in mind.

The pic is the cinema in Bergerac.
Fear not, I still have lots of French pics to load!

Beware Mondays

2011-08-14T10:11:00.006+01:00

Mondays are peculiar days in France. We went to Perigueux on a Monday and found everything closed. Thinking to enjoy a birthday celebration meal before we packed up and drove home, we drove to St Foy le Grande on La Dordogne and found the chosen restaurant closed. Of course! It was Monday. Hasty scratching of heads. Where to eat, if it was Monday?

St Foy offered nothing and the countryside south of the river, around Ligueux, Saussignac and Monestier, though beautiful, offered only closed auberges and restaurants. We drove into a golf resort hotel, which was open - but would not accept us because we were not resident. So, about six restaurants later, we arrived back in Bergerac, where we'd started, heading for the tourist area of the old town. Surely that would be open?

It was, and we had a very nice meal in a restaurant opposite the poissonnerie. I chose lotte saison and hoped it was fish. Whatever it was, it looked delicious, tasted wonderful and when I checked in the dictionary next day, discovered it had been monkfish of the low season. I'd been lucky with my starter, too, in ordering a tartine de legumes. It arrived as an artistically built mound of fresh vegetables: a baby carrot, a slice of red pepper, and paper thin slices of something yellow that may have been fennel, but might not. Something equally thin, almost transparent with faint pink stripes on white, a baby tomato cut precisely so that the inner structure formed the shape of a tiny tree. Delicious!
But the moral of the tale is this - in the Bergerac area of France (I cannot speak for other areas) the food is good, but almost impossible to get on a Monday night!

I thought you might enjoy a pic of me in my tree-felling gear!

Holidays - the aftermath

2011-08-12T15:46:00.003+01:00

All holidays come to an end, and I am now back in damp, rainy, grey England. Once we fought our way through the mass of post behind the front door, exclaimed over the height of the lawns and that we'd missed the blooming of the buddleia and the Shasta daises, I rushed upstairs and grabbed a warm sweater. Even when it rained in France, and it did, for nearly three solid weeks, it was never really cold.

We're still in the middle of the de-heaval (it seems wrong to call it an upheaval when the holiday is over!) - masses of clothes waiting to be washed, empty cupboards and shelves to restock so we can eat every day, and getting rid of the ants that have decided to invade one corner of our utility room while we've been away. I even had to catch and gently put out of the window a small spider who had taken up residence in our bed. Obviously a spider with delusions of grandeur.

And then there's catching up with the e-stuff; 1,752 e-mails in my in-box even though I'd gone no mail on all but my crit groups. One group alone had 860 posts. Although I've not done much work while I've beeen away, I have done some, and stored it all on a usb. Now comes the dicey moment of transferring that stuff back to my main computer. In the past I've been known to keep the old stuff and delete the new, but hopefully I've gained more IT awareness since then!

2011-08-05T14:23:00.004+01:00

Prior to the thunderstorm a day or two ago, we spotted this visitor - or it may be a local resident. How are we to know? (After all, we are the guests here.) Almost three feet long, it froze when it saw us, hung around long enough for me to take pictures, and then shot off through the long grass and into an old, overgrown wall beneath the trees.

The same afternoon, we saw a much smaller black snake wriggling across the upstairs balcony. We got there in time to persuade it outside was much preferable to the interior of the house, and it obligingly wriggled off. We thought that one came down from the roof tiles to seek safer quarters in a thunderstorm. I suppose they hunt the small lizards that live in the walls and the roof.

Once the new arrivals had rested up after their journey from England, we started the real business. Felling and hauling out old, dead trees. Trickier than it looks, even with the help of this lovely little piece of equipment. After several hours work we had two large specimens hauled out onto the field where they can be safely cut up to make winter fuel.

We were muddy - because the trees had fallen across the bank of the stream - and sweaty, and once work was declared over for the day, there was a rush to have a shower and find clean clothes. But what a satisfying day! And we certainly enjoyed supper and a glass or two of wine.

What is danger?

2011-08-03T13:45:00.004+01:00

Our friends arrived bearing English newspapers yesterday, and I read that a boy has died because a goalpost fell on his head. Tragedy though this is to his grieving family, I don't see the sense in the subsequent demand that a risk assessment must be done on goalposts up and down the country.

Thus goalposts become close kin to the childhood game of conkers, which has now been ruled out of safe sports in schools. I have heard that chestnut trees should be cut down so that said conkers would not fall on anyone's head. Then there's the rumour that trees should in fact be felled because they may drop branches on people passing beneath.

How much of this is true I do not know. But it seems to me that as video games, films, novels become or contain more violence, real life is being tied down to the equivalent of walking in straight lines because bends and zig zags may contain hazards.

Common sense seems to have gone out of the window in the last thirty years. Life is dangerous, has always been dangerous, and it is up to the invidivual to circumnavigate those dangers, whatever they happen to be. Driving cars is dangerous, perhaps one of the most dangerous things we ever do, and yet people feel so safe and cocooned that they speed through houseing estates and motorways with equal abandon.

Forget the goal posts and conkers; one the whole, they are among the safer things in life.

A lot of bull!

2011-07-31T09:26:00.003+01:00

We've been walking almost every day we've been here, but now the days have turned sunny and hot, we've been doing it early in the morning, before the heat begins to bite. Yesterday we passed the Chateau Maurice at the end of a long walk over towards the holiday village of Constant, and today we went in the opposite direction and found ourselves deep in the woods.
Not a problem, even though imagination suggested that if I were walking on the north American continent, I wouldn't have been so happy, knowing that a bear might appear around the next corner, or a cougar be lying in wait along some branch. But I prefer my forest trails with vistas, and this one was simply flat walking along a muddy trail with scrub and trees either side. Nothing to look at until eventually we struck out into rolling hills and fields again.

Admiring a vast field of grass sprinkled with blue flowers, I got down on my knees to take a photograph and heard dh shushing me and pointing to something in the bushes behind him. Not five feet away lay a huge white bull, no doubt rudely awoken from his night's rest (by us). His back end, facing us, looked as big as a house and since I have little faith at the best of times that the single strand electric fences the French use would keep an animal of his size away from us if he chose to disregard it, we hurriedly tiptoed away down the track.
The blackberries are out here, and are ripening fast. We've collected a few and plan to make a blackberry crumble, maybe with some of the plums growing in the field mixed in. Right now as I sit by the open window with the sun pouring in, I hear the rustle among the hazel trees and catch a glimpse of a red squirrel scampering through the branches.

2011-07-29T20:10:00.005+01:00

Some of the buildings in the Dordogne are old, and look it.

I don't mean the famous chateaux,
or abbeys, but the smaller buildings where the non-rich people live. These two shots were taken on our visit to Lou Peyrol, and the big church with the roof garden (!) is right opposite the restaurant. The stone of the private buildings is soft and crumbly, so maybe it makes the buildings look older than they actually are, but then the alterations, visible in the structures, suggest otherwise. The church is either much more modern, or built of a different stone. I suspect it is a more recent structure.

We have discovered something called a Plan des circuits pedestres & VTT in our local mairie. The gentleman behind the counter and I conducted a most pleasant conversation in which I spoke English and he spoke French - and we understood each other perfectly. Anyway, it has taken us about three years to discover that the green VTT sign we see about the countryside translates as velo tout-terrain - or mountain bike trails, which we are not about to try.

But now we know about the pedestres or petite randonnee, loosely translated as a short hikes. So we tried one the other day, with map in hand and much arguing between us about when we should turn left or right. Dh does not wish to be caught out by an irate French farmer, but I thought if we took a wrong turn the worst we would face would be an irate French chien barking excessively. And since some of the French chiens are large Alsations, often in pairs, or farmyard mastiff types, that wasn't exactly as comforting as it might sound.

Anyway, we completed our walk, with about as much much good-natured argument as you might expect between husband and wife, and navigated our way exactly as le petite randonnee map suggested. Fields by the monastery, well-tended orchards, a short time in the cool green forests, winding trails, we experienced them all, and on the way passed this very good looking farm house. All in all, a satisfying day.

(PS no barking chien, I'm glad to report)

Eating out

2011-07-28T09:35:00.009+01:00

Yesterday we had three hours of sunshine, which saved my sanity. We also went to a local restaurant avec chambres, called Auberge Lou Peyrol, for a meal.

It is in the small village of St Marcel du Perigord and it's run by Guy and Fiona, who met in Zermatt when working at one of the big hotels there.

Fiona is English and Guy, French, so we're not afraid to try out our poor French, knowing that there is a menu Anglais if we need it.

The terrace has been closed for three weeks due to the constant rain, which means a big difference in income for them. Eating on terraces or the street in towns is so common in France, and usually adds hugely to the covers. We see folorn tables and chairs outside eateries in England now - but it is only because smokers have to be accommodated somewhere!

Our meal was lovely, as expected, full of small surprises. A frothy something or other in a small glass to tease the appetite, then foie gras for dh and saumon d'Ecosse pour moi, followed by cochon for him and chicken for me. Creme brulee with strawberries for dessert, and a small glass with strawberry liquer beneath yogurt with the coffee.

We didn't want expresso, nor a double expresso, so I asked for cafe Americano, which brought recognition. Here it is a cafe d'onger, I was told. (That is how it sounded, so I hope it is not spelled so very differently.) The name of the auberge translates as the cauldron or cooking pot. It's not in my French/English dictionary, just as I never found the word bolly, which is what the people of this region call a roofed terrace. Evidently lou is their equivalent of the definite article le or la.

So, with wine, l'addition was 102 euros.

House of Wine and wildlife

2011-07-26T10:14:00.009+01:00

We must have missed the House of Wine in Bergerac on other trips, or else it has opened up this year. We didn't bother going down into the caves or view the art exhibition. The courtyard was more than enough for me, with its wooden gallery on two sides and old, ivy-covered stone and brick walls completing the square. Beneath the gallery a series of posters details the history of wine in the area from Stone Age times, with lots of info on which wines grew where and why. Philistine that I am, I just like drinking it!

Still the rain continues. It's like being at home, except that it's still warmer here most of the time. The clouds are hanging low over the tree tops and the air is thick and heavy - 94% humidity. We may have to go looking for a lavarie soon - we can wash clothes at the mill no problem, but drying them in this weather is an issue.

There is a field surrounded by trees next to the mill, and we've found that deer come down at night and eat the plums off the tree. They regularly trek through in both directions, going down to drink at the river, or just passing through. We've put up our wildlife camera overnight, and caught one picture where the deer certainly saw or heard something from the camera as it took his picture. He stared right at it, and then vanished into the darkness. The camera caught a few other pictures, sometimes a stag, sometimes a doe. We saw a doe while we were eating breakfast on the bolly one morning, and yesterday around sixish, still daylight, I looked up just at the right moment to see a doe and faun sprinting for the cover of the trees.

A French lunch

2011-07-23T12:01:00.006+01:00

There was a hint of sunshine yesterday so we shot off into Bergerac hoping to catch it. We needed to replenish the store cupboard (for that, read fridge) but we spent a happy couple of hours wandering around the old town before we hit the new Carrefour.
We've had too much rain lately - the first pic is typical of the last fortnight.

What we'd rather have is the second pic!

We've found the food prices high this year, and it's all because of the exchange rate. A couple of years ago, there were almost two euros to the pound sterling. Now, a euro equals 94pence or very nearly 100p (a pound sterling). You can imagine that makes a difference to the food bill. There's little on the supermarche shelves less than a euro. Now a bottle of French wine at five euros is not about £2.50, but almost £5. Petrol is about the same as back home - around £1.35 - £1.39 a litre when we left. Let's hope it's not gone up again when we get back. Bearing that in mind, we find 11 euros x 2 just a little much for lunch every day when we're out and about, so we seek out a boulangerie that provides those wonderful baguettes filled with chicken and ham, cheese and salad. Poulet complet, nine inches long, in a fresh baguette at 3.50 euros - what could be better? We found ours, a seat in the thin sunshine, and ate it across the square from the restaurant advertising moules frites for seven euros. Two old Frenchmen walked by, nodded approvingly and bade us 'Bon appetit.'

Having said that, every restaurant was packed with people lunching in true French style.

Rain, rain and an interview

2011-07-20T11:00:00.000+01:00

The farmers must be delighted with all the rain we having here in the Dordogne, but I'm tired of it now. I came to France for sunshine ...

We've had a little sunshine this morning, but as I look out of the window I see dark grey clouds drifting in from the west. The rain comes from the Bay of Biscay, drifts east, dumps the lot exactly where we are, and drifts on east. The next day, you can almost bet on it that those self same clouds will halt, drift west and dump again, exactly where we are.

Perhaps I'm getting cynical about the weather! There has been one good thing to cheer me up this morning - my interview is up on the RNA Blog.
Here's the link - http://tinyurl.com/3vypvff

I tried really hard to make it interesting, so let me know what you think!

Book trailers

2011-07-19T10:14:00.006+01:00

You can probably tell that the weather here is not as good as it should be by the amount of time I'm spending writing for my blog! We've got wind and rain showers and it is definitely c-o-o-o-l.

I checked my You Tube trailers last night to see how they're doing. If you're interested here are the links -

one
two
three

The two later ones are definitely better than the one I did for Dark Pool - whatever possessed me to use pink font over a scene of Viking raiders? Sigh. One lives and learns...

A minute and a half seems to be a good length of time to get across a simple message. There's a difference in amateur trailers and those produced by professionals, but we do what we can with the limited resources we have. It is something I enjoy. Maybe if I was twenty and looking for a career, it might have appealed. The young people of today have so many opportunities for fascinating careers ~ things that were only to be found in science fiction sixty years ago!

The pics are from the batch taken in Perigeueux yesterday.

Dodging the rain

2011-07-18T23:55:00.005+01:00

We drove to Perigueux today. We parked on the Quay de l'Isle beside the river, right below the Cathedral St Front. We'd barely got twenty yards along the Cours Fenelon before it began to rain, so we ducked under the shelter of a garage forecourt until the dark clouds passed over.

From there we went up the Rue des Farges in the old town and up to the cathedral. The building is full of domes and minarets, and inside it was very dim. Lots of people wandering around taking photographs, which to me always seems not the right thing to do. Outside, the streets were still wet and grey looking.
From there we walked through the old streets and the indoor market which was closing down (and it was only just after twelve o'clock) and onto the more modern Bd Michel Montaigne where we bough a Poulet Complet baguette and ate it sitting on the open square where the new underground car park has gone in in the last couple of years.

Rain clouds threatened once more - its been doing this for the past two or three days - so we moved on. As luck would have it, we struck a narrow alley down to the river, walked tghrough a car park and looked straight up at the cathedral with a blue sky behind it . Wonderful. Ten minutes later it was raining again.
If you wish for bigger pictures, remember you can always click on the pic, and it will open in a new and bigger format.

2011-07-17T12:00:00.000+01:00

So where did we eat last night? We drove cautiously down the six foot wide road to the bottom of the hill without meeting anything coming up the other way (relief all round!) and drove to a restaurant in St Georges de Montclard. Studied the menu, looked at the empty tables and decided it wasn't open until 7pm or later.

Drove on in a big circle and passed the house we almost bought three or four years ago, noted that the owners had added a pool since last year, and that another old house was in the process of being renovated. Looked at each other, and shook our heads. Not even if we win the lottery? No, said dh. We'll stay in hotels for a month at a time if we win £162 million on the European lottery as some lucky people did this week. Three or four skiing holidays a year? Right! Pay for the kids to come over from Oz and join us, too!

We went into the restaurant run by the commune, and it too was empty but for a couple of locals at the bar. But they were happy to serve a meal, and I ate salade de chevre chaud for starters, which was very tasty, and papillote de poisson en parchment au Provencal as my main course. It wasn't very good. I expected the parchment to be that very thin crinkly pastry whose name I cannot remember, and it wasn't. More like brown paper, which went soggy as the tomatoes covering the white fish inside drained into it.

Now I like both white fish and tomatoes, but together they do not go. I was disappointed. I had a glass of red wine, and dh had two beers with his starter and canard du maison, which he enjoyed, and it cost us 44 euros. Since the euro=94pence right now, it wasn't a cheap meal. Perhaps next Saturday we'll go to Lou Peyrol, which we know has a brilliant chef. We'll pay a little more, but it will be worth it.

I've remembered the name of the pastry - filo!

We should have booked

2011-07-16T21:34:00.010+01:00

Today we walked here. Set off in the cool, and aimed to eat lunch in the creparie. Unfortunately it only opens in the evenings during the month of July and August, which makes it pretty exclusive. Still, Clermont de Beauregard is fascinating and we spent time following the road that encircles it. In the centre of the tiny village is the church and a chateau, which the French call a castle, and a ruined tower stands alone mid-way between the two. Obviously once it was attached to other buildings, but they have long since gone. The village is on a hill to begin with, and the church and tower are visible for miles around. The view over the surrounding countryside is not to be sniffed at, either.

Walking back, we surprised a heron fishing below the bridge, and he took off only three feet away from me.

We drove back to the creparie about 6pm and the appetising smells told us tghe place was open. We walked up the steps and into a dim, low-ceilinged and empty room with five or six tables covered in the classic red and white checked tablecloths - but each and every one held a reserve sign. A lady thudded up some internal stairs hidden behind the reception desk in the corner by the door and greeted us politely. In French, of course. By this time I'd checked every table. 'Tout reservee?' I asked.

'Oui', said the lady and picked up a small notebook to consult a list. Fearing a conversation neither dh nor I would understand, we smiled, and said 'Ne problem pas. Une autre jour.'

'Ah, oui.' She smiled and gave us a sheet bearing the telephone number and times of opening. After all, it was Saturday night, and we ought to have known better. But I think we both secretly thought it might not be open at all, so we went away quite happy. We will go back another day.

Women at war

2011-07-15T09:25:00.004+01:00

I've almost finished reading the third book in the Stieg Larsson trilogy. I discovered them here at the mill the first night we arrived, and grabbed the chance to read them all. I tried the first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, some time ago, bogged down a third of the way through and returned it to the library unfinished. Then Lorna, at my local writers's group, shook her head and said I'd stopped reading just before the girl did something really terrible and the story took off.

How right she was!

I put aside Jilly Cooper's Jump in favour of Larsson, picked up where I left off the first time, and haven't stopped reading since. They really are good, and it's such a shame he didn't live to see the success of his books.

My crit groups recently seem full of writers who have a heroine masquerade, for various reasons, as a man. I always find this a trifle doubtful as women are basically so different, in so many ways, to men. However, the third book in the Larsson trilogy carries this homage on page 3:

"It is estimated that some six hundred women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men....

But from antiquity to modern times, there are many stories of female warrior Amazons. The best known find their way into the history books as warrior queens, rulers as well as leaders....

On the other hand, history is quite reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and played their part in battle on the same terms as men. Hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks."

It isn't a new concept in fiction, but I hadn't thought it was backed up so emphatically in fact. I applaud the courage of those women, certainly, but I'm not sure I understand why they wanted to go to war. Larsson scatters other references throughout the book, and uses it as a theme of women battling against men, this time in the modern day battlefield of the courtroom. I don't doubt his sources, either.

You can't trust the weather

2011-07-13T20:26:00.003+01:00

Yesterday we sweltered in 31 degrees, so hot that the slightest exertion had us sweating, and walking any distance was very tiring. Then about 8.30pm last night it began to rain, the temperature dropped and it stayed cold today. We went for a brisk walk uphill wearing anoraks - and were glad of them.
We passed this building on our ramble. A rural gite - soft gee sound - so no doubt we could stay there if we wished. No need - we're very happy in the mill and there seems little or no sign of mice this year. Last year, as readers of this blog will remember, we had mice popping into and out of sofas, through cracks we couldn't find, eating crumbs off the breakfast bar and one unfortunate little creature got trapped in the toaster.
The stream at the bottom of the field was very low yesterday, almost dry in places, with only the thinnest trickle still running. Today it is almost back to normal levels, so the fish may survive. I can hear the wild ducks quacking as I type, but it's no good going to see what's up. They're so wild they take off when we're twenty yards away - and give us a fright. Tomorrow we'll have to go and seek more food. Maybe a trip into Bergerac. At least the weather forecast is good.

Is nothing sacred?

2011-07-11T10:58:00.007+01:00

The lavender is in full scented bloom here, and walking in the meadows around the mill frequently brings up a smell of mint. Walnuts are fully formed on the trees, and this morning a red squirrel raced down the walnut tree near the bolly, bounced across a patch of tall grass and disappeared onto the lower patio only three yards from me. (A bolly, in case you are wondering, is the local word for a covered patio at the side of the house.)

The sun is blazing down from a blue sky, but tomorrow rain is forecast. We can't complain; evidently the Dordogne region has been suffering from a severe water shortage.

Back home, the row goes on about journalists hacking peoples' phones, a crime the profession seem to consider unimportant when in pursuit of a story. The News of the World, a salacious rag I remember from the days of my childhood, has bitten the dust as a result, and hopefully all Murdoch's papers will have to change their ways if they wish to survive. If a person cannot be sure of having a private phone call, what use are phones?

I read in the Daily Telegraph over the weekend that the Oxford or serial comma 'is entering that zombie half-life where all dying grammatical rules survive for a while - appreciated only by the prissy and the fussy. It's better to kill off the poor, awkward thing, rather than let it linger on, unhappily, between the covers of books published by Oxford University Press.' (In case you are curious, the Oxford or serial comma is the one inserted just before the "and" or "or" in the last item of a list of three or more items, as in the sentence 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' Without the Oxford comma, Churchill would have offered the British people just 'blood, toil, tears and sweat.')

Harry Mount, the Telegraph journalist, goes on to say that the Oxford comma is fiddly, correct but followed only by a clever minority and smacks of smug pedantry. he quotes H W Fowler, who said in 1926: "Pride of knowledge is a very unamiable characteristic, and the display of it should be sedously avoided."

So there we are. Note to self: check and see how many newspapers Rupert Murdoch actually owns. He might actually own the Daily Telegraph for all I know.

Away we go

2011-07-09T10:57:00.005+01:00

Leaving home at a few minutes to six am is a rare experience, but it got us clear of the rush hour traffic and well on our way to Folkestone. (roughly 350 miles travelled). Then through the Channel tunnel and into France via Calais and on to Abbeville, where we had booked an overnight stop.

We didn't make it quite so early next morning, and reached Rouen in the middle of the rush hour. Predictably, we took a wrong turn where the road suddenly branched into three lanes with traffic hurling onwards at a rate of knots and it was too late to take evasive action. The sat nav man took over - I think he sounds just like Daniel Craig, but dh thinks it's a computer voice, which doesn't say much for Daniel Craig - and took us on our way south, always south to Evreux, Dreux, Chartres, Orleans.

After having the peage to ourselves, after Orlean, the traffic was heavy, and the inevitable pile-up occurred - you can just see one of the crashed cars in the picture. A car and caravan had overturned and crashed into the barrier, and taken a second car with them. Though their holiday was probably shot, no one seemed hurt. Imagine trying to phone on a mobile, in French, with cars piling up around ...shivers.

Vierzon and Chateauroux. Limoges and Brive, and we're starting to get tired of the endless rolling vistas of trees and hillsides. By the 400 mile mark, we're near our destination and stop at the Intermarche for a few basic supplies to see us over the weekend. We end up spending around 60 euros and plod on. The sky is blue, the sun is hot - around 25 degrees, and we get to the mill, step inside and switch on the lights. Nothing. A power cut. No doubt some thunderstorm has flipped the power supply. Then we remember the freezer...disaster. A vomit-inducing swill of de-frosted ice and hints of what was once a tune pizza and various other things swirling in the bottom of the old chest freezer. Ah, the joys of vacations...

Will it last?

2011-07-04T11:14:00.006+01:00

Starting to get excited about going on holiday. Thinking about it, we're very lucky. Those born pre-1950-ish didn't have holidays unless the family was pretty well-to do. On this website, we're told that holidays began in the sixteenth century with royal progresses around the country. I think that's stretching the idea just a tad.

The Grand Tour is quoted, and I have no doubts the nobility enjoyed them, but I'm sure there are many working class families who never got their annual trip to the sea or the mountains, much less packed a suitcase and set off for Paris for le weekend, or a sunny fortnight in the Mediterranean as we do today. I remember one holiday in my childhood - a week at Lytham St. Annes, near Blackpool. Evidently there had been an earlier one, but I contracted mumps, so Father and brother went off on the planned week on the farm near Carlisle and mother stayed at home with me.
But these days we all expect a holiday as a right, and usually its a holiday abroad. How long will it last, this jetting off on pleasure trips across the globe, when the world is in recession, oil is running out and pollutants mess everything up? Maybe not as long as we hope.

On a more upbeat note, I enjoyed the last of Scott & Bailey on ITV last night. As a female crime show, it hits all the right notes for me, and I hope they begin a new series right away. Intelligent women, who can do a difficult job and still get caught out by men promising the earth and producing nothing. The interrelationships are beautifully done, especially between the women.

Blyth Writers and me

2011-07-02T13:50:00.007+01:00

In the midst of all the Wimbledon frenzy I went out to meet Blyth Writers group on Thursday afternoon. They had invited me to speak to their group - to talk about me, and e-publishing. I know writers do this sort of thing, and I had done something like it before, but only as part of a team of six authors all speaking on the same evening. Consequently I had to admit to some nervousness as I drove to Blyth on the east coast. This time I was on my own.

The writers welcomed me beautifully. After a hesitant start with my little story of not being able to say, as most authors do, that I wrote stories from six years old, everything seemed to go smoothly. Instead I revealed that I had kept a tiny notebook in which I recorded the titles of all the stories I read. I told them I kept it alphabetically, which was incorrect. Memory has clicked back in since Thursday, and reminded me that I didn't keep the list alphabetically, and soon couldn't find anything on the list, thus rendering it useless. Which is no doubt the real reason why I went into librarianship.

They asked lots of questions, fed me tea and a chocolate biscuit, and I recounted everything I'd learned about e-publishing. One lady said she'd found my trailer for Shadows, and liked it very much. I was amazed, and delighted to hear that. It is their practice to read out some of their own writing to the group, and allowed me to hear several pieces. They all wrote to a high standard, and I'm sure they could soon find a place in the e-publishing world - if they choose to do so.

The port of Blyth dates back to the twelfth century, and I remember reading that Richard Crawford unloaded Joleta Mallet at Blyth and took her to Flaw Valley at Hexham when she was ill on her trip from Malta. Amazing how Dunnett references still creep up on me after all these years.

There is little to see of a historic port these days. It all looked smart, clean and very 21st century. The picture of the laburnum walk at Seaton Delavell seemed appropriate, since it's quite near Blyth.

£10,000 a year

2011-06-29T11:54:00.006+01:00

Here's a frivolous bit of news for the summer season - Ancestry.com reports that Kate Middleton and the author of Pride and Prejudice are "11th cousins, six times removed due to their 15th century common ancestor Henry Percy, who was the 2nd Earl of Northumberland."

So Kate has done better than Lizzie Bennet. Mr Darcy, delightful as he was, never had a title, though he did have £10,000 a year. There is a site that offers to calculate the purchasing power of the British pound from 1200 to date, and I entered £1000 and clicked. The answer came back as a staggering £53,800.

So, since Mr Darcy had £10,000 per annum, I multiplied the answer by 10, and got £5,380,000 or, in other words, almost six million a year. I'd be the first to admit that maths is not my strong point, and I'd love for someone else to do the sums.
Here's the link: http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk

Can that be right? I wonder then, if Kate's prize capture can match that? But still, Lizzie never got to be called anything but Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy. Kate can now swan around as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

My promotional bit

2011-06-26T15:37:00.008+01:00

It occurred to me last night when I couldn't sleep that I hadn't put the message out about my book on my own blog! How stupid could I be?

So - there's a trailer for it: here

The link to buy at Amazon UK: here
Amazon.com: here
from the publisher: here

Genre: Contemporary romance with ghosts
Blurb:
Melissa thinks she’s taking a huge risk in going on holiday with Rory Hepburn. He may be gorgeous, but she only met him three days ago. But when she sees the old watermill in rural France, she is delighted. Within ten minutes of her arrival, she sees the man in black, but thinks nothing of it. Concentrating more on keeping her secrets and sleeping alone, she is shocked when ghosts disturb her first night at the mill. Not just one ghost, but two. When Christophe arrives at the mill, the chic Frenchman regards Melissa as his soul mate, and Melissa knows she’s in real trouble.
A chilling tale, written with humour and drenched in the sights and perfumes of the rural Dordogne, this is a must-read tale for those who like a romance with a ghostly twist.

This my fifth published book, and my first contemporary tale. In many ways writing about character in this century is easier than writing about people in the sixteenth or eleventh centuries. There isn’t as much research required, though it’s important to get things like brand names, distances, food and fashion right - hairstyle or hemlines can speak volumes about a character’s personality today.

I wouldn't be surprised if you already knew I lived in Northumberland, a corner of England rich in castles and history, and that I visit France regularly for summer holidays. So you can believe me when I say I've walked, sat, eaten and enjoyed all the places I write about.

Excerpt One: Melissa arrives at the mill and loves it. She has a swift look around while Rory prepares a meal for her. (A bolly is what the locals call a verandah)

The white table already held a bowl of salad, a wicker basket of bread and the opened bottle of wine. He was fast and efficient. No sooner had she taken her seat than he put a plate of steak before her and offered the salad bowl.
She tilted her head back and smiled at him. How good to have a man prepared to cook for her. "This looks delicious. Does Jonny plan to do a lot of work here?"

He picked up his cutlery and cut into his steak. "The grand plan is for two bedrooms and a bathroom on the lower level so Jonny can invite friends. The bathroom's finished, but the rest is a muddle."

That meant no bedrooms on the lower floor, and only one on this level. An ugly suspicion bloomed in her mind. Melissa heaped salad onto her plate and replaced the steel salad servers carefully in the bowl. "Then am I right in thinking there is only one bedroom here?"

The chilly edge to her voice brought his head up.
His peacock blue eyes narrowed. "'fraid so. That isn't going to be a problem, is it?"

Dismay at his deception roared through her, and small flash of fear and timidity followed it. Yes, one bedroom most certainly would be a problem. She wasn't ready. Not yet. Talk about being taken for granted—the conceited ass expected her to tumble into bed with him without a second thought. She inhaled sharply. "It is presumptuous of you to assume I'll share a bed with you right away."

He stopped eating and stared at her, surprise etched into the lines of his face.
Had she misjudged him? Maybe she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He'd be insulted if that was the case. So she offered a sweet smile and spoke gently. "Unless I'm wrong and you intend to sleep on the sofa?"

"Presumptuous?" His gaze darted across her face. Presumably he was trying to read her expression. He didn't know how to answer her. Melissa lifted her brows slightly, smiled without opening her mouth and waited.

He put down his cutlery and picked up his wine glass. "What do you mean?"
She frowned. How could he pretend he did not know what she meant? "We are not lovers." She bit off each word. "We may become so, but right now I expect a room of my own." Heat rose through her skin, and her hand trembled on the rim of the table. She whipped it out of sight. Let him make of it what he would.

Rory swallowed too soon, choked and coughed.
He flung himself out of his chair, coughing, one fist to his mouth as he strode across the bolly. As the fit lessened, he thrust one hand against the oak upright supporting the roof and stood there, head down, breathing hard.

Annoyance did not stop her admiring the way his shoulders heaved with his breathing, or the graceful way he stood even when he was in some distress. His attention was not on her. It was the first time she'd seen him rattled, and his reaction interested her. When his breathing calmed, he slowly strolled back to the table and took his seat.

His eyes still watered a little, and he blinked rapidly to clear them. "Christ, I feel as if all sorts of pits are yawning at my feet. Would you believe me if I said I honestly hadn't thought about it?"

Melissa sipped her wine. She didn't believe him for a moment. "How could you ignore it? There is only one bed."
He winced, as if her words pained him.
Refusing to weaken, Melissa stabbed at her steak. How arrogant was he? Did he think every woman in the world begged to be bedded?

Birdsong sounded all around them in the warm green silence.
"Melissa."
Her heart flipped over at the sound. His deep brown voice stirred her senses just as it had the first time they'd met. She must get a grip, or she'd be lost. Her pulse ran fast and her chest tightened. This was important. She looked up, prepared to fight.
Watchful intelligence overrode his initial surprise. Now he sat back and sipped his wine and she remembered he was a successful solicitor, with an important and well-known law firm.

"Please don't feel under any pressure. We've only just met, and…I don't want to spoil things by rushing them. If you want to sleep alone, that's fine." He hesitated, as if he might add some comment, and then thought better of it. "There's a large squashy sofa in the living room. I'll sleep there."

The tension in her shoulders disappeared. She ought to be pleased he'd capitulated, but something rankled. She'd expected him to try and change her mind, persuade her. He might have tried. Part of her, inexplicably miffed that he hadn't, made her say, "We'll toss a coin for it. That would be fair."

He raised his wine glass and offered an agreeable smile. "I'll drink to that."
Instantly she regretted the surge of independence that made her make the offer, and hated the easy arrogance that allowed him to accept her challenge. He'd probably win, and she'd be the one on the sofa. She'd been outmaneuvered.
He had such charm and knew how to use it. Once, in a rare mother-daughter-sharing-secrets evening, she'd asked her mother what had led her to the one-night stand with Lt. Col. John Hazlerigg. Her mother had smiled, rolling the wine glass against her cheeks as she considered the question.

"Power," she'd said at last. "Not money, but a physical presence and an air of command. Charisma, allied with such certainty your knees—well, mine in this case—wobble and everyone knows he's the alpha male in the pack."
Melissa had spent the next week analyzing the concept, but reached no definite conclusion. Now that she'd met Rory, she understood something of her mother's explanation. There had been that odd tingling in the back of her knees when Jonny introduced them, and the way her heart skipped about in her chest when he spoke in that gorgeous voice.

If she'd ever met her father, she might have had some standard to judge by, but Hazlerigg was married and out of bounds. Mother had refused to inform her lover that he had fathered a child because he would have felt impelled to marry her. That would have ruined his career and broken the heart of his then fiancée.

Melissa's fingers twisted together around her wine glass. She rarely thought about her illegitimacy now, and had never betrayed her mother's secret. But the old, churning feelings returned whenever she was reminded of it. Tonight she had an additional worry. If Rory ever found out, what would he say? His parents would certainly hate her. Relationships could not survive without honesty, yet she was constrained by a promise never to speak of her father.

"This dressing is delicious." Her voice sounded brittle in her ears.
Not speaking of her father had been hurtful all through her childhood. When the other kids boasted of theirs, Melissa had nothing to offer and suffered agonies trying to hide the fact. Promising herself that the same sort of relationship would not do for her, she had vowed never to sleep with a man until she knew him really well. Maybe even until she was married to him. Adrian had been a terrible mistake.

"Easy enough to make here. Garlic is fresh and olive oil plentiful. What were you daydreaming about?"
"Oh, nothing special." She glanced up, smiled brightly at Rory while she tried to think of something to cover her lies. "Listening to the birds. They sound so close and there are so many. It's not like this back home, is it?"

Rory cleared the plates, and the break gave her time to regain her composure. Another glass of wine helped calm her, and when Rory produced strawberries for dessert, she exclaimed in genuine pleasure. When they were eaten, Melissa stretched out her legs toward the evening sunshine and let him clear the table. Two glasses of wine, a good meal and she was more at ease with herself.

Excerpt Two. Melissa volunteers to sleep on the sofa instead of Rory.
Melissa looked at her watch. It was well past midnight. The sofa was comfortable, but the unaccustomed heat kept her awake. Spending summer in a romantic old water mill in the Dordogne did have disadvantages. When she ran tentative fingers over her flanks, her skin was slick with moisture.

The warm breeze from the open window moved through the room, but brought little relief. Crickets chirped so vigorously they might have been sitting on the hearthstone five feet away. A cold drink would be good. She scrambled off the sofa and tiptoed across the floorboards, hoping she wouldn't step on any insect life. With her hands under the kitchen tap, she welcomed the gush of cold water, gulped some from her cupped palm and ran her damp hands over her face.
Fumbling her way through the shadows to the door, she released the latch and stepped outside.

That was better. Cool air breathed across her skin. Ignoring the quick rustle of lizards scurrying toward crevices in the old walls, she strolled to the chairs, pale and cold in the moonlight.
She sank into one of them, and flinched at the coldness of the plastic against her skin. Stars blinked above the massed ranks of dark trees. A breeze that never reached the valley floor swept across the topmost leaves of the tall trees in the meadow and produced the soft susurration in the air that was already familiar to her.
Rory slept in the big bed on the other side of the wall. He did not like their current sleeping arrangements. The tightening of his mouth, the flexing of his jaw muscles had shown that, and said very clearly that he'd let her have her way but he was not the kind of man who gave up easily. Had his pride suffered when she refused to share his bed? He had certainly been surprised. Would he try and persuade her, or sulk until she gave in?
It had been a good decision not to let Rory sleep on the sofa for then she would have felt beholden to him. Much better that she owed him neither gratitude nor thanks at this point.
She stroked her thighs. Already the slickness dried from her skin. A wisp of long grass whisked along the flagstones, breathed across her foot and vanished. Rory had shown her a shed snakeskin as a warning not to be frightened if she saw the owner one day. The fragile, almost translucent skin had been trapped between the stones of the bolly and the old drain not four feet from where she sat.

A cold breeze wandered by. Melissa hugged herself against the sudden chill. Perhaps this was a crazy idea after all. Flickers of movement caught her eye. For no reason, her heart thudded in her chest. With her teeth pressing on her lower lip, she stared at the western end of the bolly where one of the four oak pillars supporting the tiled roof stood out sharp and clear in the moon's glow.

Beyond them, the shrubs and rose bushes were gray against the dusty, moonlit ribbon of the drive. Nothing moved. She heard nothing but the soft sound of the breeze, yet her heart bounced faster, as if she were in danger. Muscles tense, she sat poised, ready to run.

The shadows made it difficult to see anything. The blackness moved and twitched close in against the house wall, less than ten feet away. A pale shifting blur morphed into hands and a face. Melissa's fingers clung to the chair arms while she strained to see through the darkness. Hair lifted on the back of her neck and goose bumps sprang on her arms. She stared at two pale blurs, one above the other, moving very close together. Sure it must be some young couple seeking privacy, she opened her mouth to call out. But some instinct held her rigid and silent. What if they weren't real?

Her heart beat so loudly that whoever lurked by the wall must surely hear it. She forced herself to inhale slowly and quietly. Her heartbeat slowed a little. The air around her was cold. It's always cold when—she slammed down on the thought about ghosts before it formed in her mind. She looked at the space between herself and the door, and the door and the dark, shifting shape.

She could reach the door. She had to.

The chair scraped across the flagstones and drowned the slap of her bare feet as she hurtled into the mill, slammed the door and rattled the bolt home.
Flexed from the hips, palms braced against the half glass door, she waited, mouth open, panting. Through the mottled glass and the wrought iron Perigourdine goose that guarded it, moonlight lit the grass beyond the bolly. Nothing moved. Her breathing slowed. She remembered she'd seen a baseball bat by the door and groped for it without taking her gaze from the door. The smooth wooden shaft came comfortingly to her hand.

Something creaked behind her. Melissa whirled on a sharp indrawn breath. The bat cocked and ready, she watched the door to the hall open. A large, shadowy form ambled into the living room. "Wha's the matter? Did you shout?"
"There's somebody out there."
"Out where?"
"On the bolly." She flung out an arm and rattled her knuckles on the goose guard. "Ow."
Rory ducked his head, ran both hands over his face. Straightening his shoulders, he walked toward the door. "I'd better have a look."
Melissa stepped aside. He stooped, fumbled for the bolt in the gloom and pulled the door open. Melissa held out the baseball bat. "Take this."

Rory blinked at the three feet of pale, solid wood and made no move to take it. "I could kill someone with that."
"Take it." She thrust it into his hand. It seemed imperative he have some protection. There was something nasty out there.
Reluctantly, Rory hefted it and stepped across the threshold. "Put the lights on."
Melissa pushed the door curtain aside and ran her palm down the bank of switches. Light bloomed inside the mill, and floodlights snapped on at each end of the bolly. Startled birds squawked, complained and clattered about in the trees.

"There's nothing here, Melissa. Come and look." He sounded wide awake.
Suddenly aware that she was wearing only a tee shirt, Melissa whipped the door curtain across her hips and peeped around the doorjamb.

Moonlight emphasized the broad shoulders tapering down to a lean waist and flat stomach. Wrinkled, striped boxers hung low on one hip. His hair stuck up about his head, and the baseball bat dangled from the fingers of one hand. The width of his chest and the prominent muscles of his arms and thighs were reassuring.
"They might—" Her breath caught in her throat as all her initial attraction to Rory rushed back and choked her. She coughed and tried again. "They might have gone round the back of the mill."

Strong men, smart heroines, make for a good story.

There now. I can rest easy. I've done my promotional bit. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!