Good News

This morning I received news that another story - Reluctance - has been accepted by MuseItUp Publishing. The setting for this one is 1803, if my memory serves correctly (I'm not good at remembering figures. Words, yes, but numbers just go into limbo and disappear) and I took a local setting I know fairly well - Gibside Hall, now a National Trust property, and imagined my characters into it. Great fun. The story was fun to write, too, though my hero/ine both suffer till they get to the last page. In true romance style, there's a happy ending.

After a run of rejections from UK agents (well, OK, two; all very nice and polite, wishing me well elsewhere but unfortunately my story is just not for them), this is such good news. I wonder if I dare look for a third piece of good news this week?

The pic is my other half looking out over the battlements of Stirling Castle. The hills behind him are where the Highland Line begins.

RNA Conference

Drove over to Gibside today and walked the Great Walk to recharge the batteries. Gibside is a sad, folorn relic of a Jacobean Mansion house built in the early 1600s on a ledge above the River Derwent. The arms of James I are still above the door. (I have a photograph of that somewhere, must try and dig it out) The house was once three storeys, but for some reason I have yet to discover, the top storey was replaced with battlements.

There are so many delightful old houses in this locality and I have photographs of many of them. Yesterday I was out to lunch at Matfen Hall, north of the Tyne, and it is so very different to Gibside. Flourishing, and making money through its new Spa and the award winning restaurant in the Old Library.

Tomorrow I am off to take part in the RNA annual conference at Penrith, and on Monday I shall load more pics of our local old houses. Possibly one or two from the conference, should I stay sober enough to take them!