Scared of Amazon

Selected a wonderful list of books yesterday in anticipation of spending my gift token. Chose nine titles all from awesome books at 0.35 pence each, hopped over to checkout and stopped short. The total cost of the books was something like £3.50 - but the postage and packing charge was £28.00! 

Telling myself it was too good to be true (to get  so many titles for so little) I went away shaking my head. They were all paperback, all from the same second-hand dealer in the UK and couldn't possibly have cost that much to post them all together.

Anyway, I declined to spend that much on postage.

Now I'm looking more carefully at each screen as I go. For me Amazon seems to be a minefield. Last time I remember their system swallowed my gift card and gave me nothing in return. (I did get it all sorted out, but it makes me wary. A couple of years ago I found I had somehow selected Amazon Prime and £79 had gone from my bank account. I did not and still don't want Amazon Prime, but their screens are so trickily worded and set out that it is easy to fall into the trap. DH fell into it a year or so later. Again, we both got everything sorted and money returned, but this sort of happening does make one wary. DH wont use Amazon any more. I use it, but in fear and trembling!

Wish me luck as I try to spend my gift wisely!

Since we have snow, wind and cold temperatures forecast for my area today I've been up and walked Tim so we can now hunker down in a warm house for a few hours and see what happens. Forecasts don't always come true, but I went looking for snow pictures and found this, taken in Zermatt in 2009 when we were perched on the top of the Kleine Matterhorn in sub-zero temperatures at something like 12-13,000 feet.

More travel woes

Remember my stories of  our relatives travel woes during a journey from Australia for Christmas? Well, they were among the 13,000 tourists stuck in Zermat yesterday with all road and rail links closed by 1.60 metres of snow. (Bearing in mind that I'm only 1.65 metres, that seems a awful lot of snow!) We feared that their onward flight back home to Sydney would be missed in the chaos.

However these members of the Black family are nothing if not resourceful. Last night we received  news that they were safe in Zurich, having got a helicopter flight from Zermatt to Tasch where they picked up their booked hire car and drove to Zurich. This morning they should be on their way to Helsinki and from there back to Australia. 

I wonder if they'll venture this way ever again?

Tim's accident

Nothing done these last three days because Tim fell on the  wooden floor of the bedroom. Usually he bounces back up as if nothing had happened, but this time he stood up on three legs, shivering and crying. Comfort and examination discovered no broken bones, nothing out of place, no painful places, no hot spots - in fact, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet for two days he was virtually immobile, and didn't want to be left alone.

So we massaged his leg, stayed beside him  and kept him warm. It happened so early in the morning he hadn't even been out for a pee. By ten o'clock that first evening he hobbled to the door and indicated he wanted to go out. He limped up to the lawn on three legs and carefully managed to have the longest pee I've ever seen. The pooh followed, so at least we knew there was nothing to worry about on that score.

The second day followed much like the first, but this time I got out the laptop and did some work while staying in the same room as with him. He got up once or twice and his movement got progressively easier as the day wore on. By night time he went out into the garden moving quite normally. The third day we went out for a walk with him on a lead so he couldn't run off and charge about as he normally does. He did just fine. Today, I think we're back to normal. When I drew back the blind he glared at the snow on the roof opposite. 'Look at that!' he might have been saying, so we went out, treading cautiously in the slippery slope down to the field. There is hardly a covering of snow, but he charged about in it with great delight. it's probably only the second time he has seen snow.

Unseasonable weather

A few of my blog friends appear to have given up on blogging in favour of other forms of social media, so I'm clearing out the attic, so to speak. No hard feelings. I've enjoyed their words of wisdom for a year or two, and if they come back on-stream, no doubt I'll find them again.

As I find new and interesting blogs, I'll add them to the list. Talking of changes - if I could discover how to put new photos up in the Jen's Holiday pics feature (on the sidebar) I'd refresh that too, but as of this moment I have no idea how I managed to get them up in the first place.

I know the north American continent  has snow already, but we still have temperatures that are unseasonably warm. I tend to dress for the season rather than the actual weather, and that is proving a huge mistake. I seem unable to adjust to going out in November without a sweater or a fleece. Madness.

A decade of paperwork

Today should be the start of getting back to normal. There's been a week of upheaval at chez Black, but now I have only a few books to move back to their original place and voila! I'm done. It was a good opportunity to weed out all the accumulated rubbish of the past decade, and I've filled the "paper" wheelie-bin ready for collection tomorrow. It is amazing to see how long I have been sending out submissions. The first was dated 8th March 2001 and in it I committed almost every sin - giving my age, mentioning a brother - I mean, what has that to do with my writing? Hopefully I've got better at it.

Not that learning to write query letters and stuff brings success. It brings the same old rejection letters, but now they all say I write very well but they don't love the work quite enough to go with it. I suspect I will have to change the format of my book and bring it into line with all the Queen-type books for sale these days. It seems from my latest dip into the market place that men write from the male POV and women write from the female. There are exceptions, but generally, that is the way it works, but I've done both in the same story. Time for a re-think.

With more snow forecast for today, plus the fact that I'm bowling off to Durham for lunch with friends, I thought I'd put up a picture of the lovely walk along the river bank at Durham on a hot, sunny day. The wooden steps down, used by the boat crews, were steaming in the heat! Those were the days....

Good reads

I finished Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant this morning. Published 2009, some of you will already have read and enjoyed it. A tale about nuns in a convent in Italy in the 1570s doesn't sound a likely theme for a good read, but I've been devouring it morning and last thing at night over the last three days and found it riveting. The first words hold the eye and the mind: Before the screaming starts, the night silence of the convent is alive with its own particular sounds. Who could resist an opening line like that? The writing is sure and the language suited to the time and place of the novel without being "worked" in any way, and the varied lives of the women are thoughtfully exposed. Fasting was commonplace among them, and reading of the reasons why it was done makes an interesting comparison with the tales of anorexia common today.

The story concerns a young girl taken into the convent against her will, but to talk about it would give away too much. Instead, let me recommend it for your TBR pile. Or even for your reading matter tonight!

I know I said I wouldn't talk about the weather, but let me just say that about three o' clock yesterday, the temperature went up and the thaw began. This morning we have patches of garden visible again. Now we stand by for floods as all that snow rolls off the hills.

Did we ever see the sun?

Suffice to say that we got back to Heathrow to sub zero temperatures, snow, and cancelled flights to Newcastle. Not only Newcastle, but Munich, Franfurt, Nice, Lyon, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and others were closed because of snow. No flights out that night, so slept on the floor to be ready for a 7.15am flight. Cancelled at 7.05. Back to baggage claim for second time to reclaim cases and rebook a flight. The queues were enormous. Noon and four o'clock flights full, standby list of 27. We opted for firm booking on 5.30pm flight. Ushered into Business class lounge for free food and drink but the serenity of the Australian First Class lounge was missing. People overflowed in this one., all looking rumpled and furiously using mobile phones. Landed at Newcastle, and the runway was covered by snow, the hard, rutted variety. I wanted to burst out in applause that we'd finally made it. Taxi drove cautiously, had to stop at cashpoint 'cos we'd spent all our spare cash eating at prohibitive prices in the airport, and the snow got deeper and the tarmac trails through it narrowed. The last hundred and fifty yards we did on foot, tugging cases through snow because the taxi driver would never have got up the hill and out again.

Then it was a case of digging out the drive. Into garage for shovel, and garage door came off its runners. Managed to winkle the mini out underneath it, only to find a flat battery. Honda slid backwards down the hill. Put mini on charge, and half an hour later roared up the hill to get to supermarket for food. Got stuck on the frozen ruts in the supermarket car park, pushed out by kind, tall gentleman. Fixed garage door. Then discovered waste bin frozen shut beneath fifteen inches of snow. This morning the back door to the garden was frozen shut.

Life is such fun. Memories of wonderful beaches such as that at Manly are all but fogotten. But you know, I'm beginning to look for the next challenge already.

Query letters

Rachelle Gardner's website should be of use to authors here. The post that caught my eye was a list of the most common mistakes in query letters to literary agents. What comes across from them, among a lot of helpful tips, is the astonishing self-confidence of the people who send query letters. Well, it may not surprise you, but it surprises me.

But then, it always amazes me how people think that writing a book is easy. (Well, some do; others think it is impossibly hard and would never think of attempting it). About five or six years ago I took a call (at work) from a lady whose name I never knew, who wanted to know "how to get a book published." How should she go about it?

Just like that. Through the sounds of tea being slurped and biscuits being crunched, it came out that she "hadn't written it yet, but I know I can." Had she even started it? "No, not yet, but it won't take long, will it?"

The conversation made me look at myself. Why didn't I approach the thing with the same astonishing self-confidence? Why don't I breeze up to literary agents and critics and introduce myself with a beaming smile and say "Hello, how are you? You must read my latest offering, I'm sure you'll love it."

Show me a real, live literary agent and I'm likely to scream "Where's the nearest table, so that I can hide beneath it?"

Never mind. I'm sure I'll grow up and become accustomed to it all some day. Meanwhile, since we've had snow flurries again but no white stuff on the ground, I've used one of my pics of the Dent valley to remind us all what snow looks like on a good day.

Snowy days and first pages

These poor sheep remind me that somewhere there's always someone worse off than me!
The snow goes on - another four
inches in the early hours, which makes our decision not to drive a hundred miles to a friend's party a sensible one.
I really have no excuse not to write during these snowy days, but I find I'm nervous about re-doing the first page of the current wip. Originally I began with a conversation. Some of the crit group thought there was too much info in it and suggested I began with a quieter sequence which introduced my protagonist. I liked both beginnings, but could see that one was too busy, and the other too quiet. Now I think that if I could somehow merge them both, I'd be on to a winner.
But can I do it? Successfully, that is.
Thank the lord for computers. I can play with the words to my heart's content, and still revert to the the originals if I so choose. Imagine doing this in the days of handwritten or typewritten versions. Shudders run down my spine at the thought. Worse still, imagine doing it with a quill pen and home made ink.

Team effort

Yesterday the whole cul de sac turned out to clear the street so cars could get in and out. One man and his boys cleared half of it the day before but their efforts were snowed on. True to form, last night it snowed again, another four inches. But all that work wasn't wasted. Looking out of the window I see that at least three of our neighbours have made it to work by car today.
I don't have to go anywhere. I can stay indoors and write if I choose , or I can go splodging in the snow. H'mmm, difficult choice!

Blue snow

Snow can be beautiful, but it can be an awful nuisance, depending how you look at it. Driving down the M6 in Cumbria on Christmas Eve I snatched this shot from the car. I have to admit it is beautiful with all those shades of blue. I took a lot more pics as we turned off to Sedbergh and drove east to Cowgill, and they'll probably turn up on here in the next few days.

But now I sit at home and see the down side. We have six inches of snow already and it is still falling. It looks as if it is melting, but come tonight sub-zero temperatures may well be with us once more. We drove through -7C as we drove home on Christmas Day, and that was at three in the afternoon.

My writing benefits. I completed a whole chapter in two bursts yesterday, and I am onto the last third of the wip. Plots are coming together as I want them, thank goodness, though there is still time for a few strands to come alive and unravel. I've just been for a walk (three days without outdoor exercise was more than enough, thank you!) and have returned feeling fresh and ready to read over the words I wrote yesterday - and strong enough to correct them if they're rubbish. Here's hoping they're not!

Writing makes you fat! Hurrah!

I always knew there had to be a reason why writing makes you fat - I just didn't have a scientific explanation for it! Sure, sitting down all the time and not moving much may have something to do with it, I won't deny that. But in November's Scientific American, Steve Mirsky talks about the research done with students who underwent tests and found that after using their brains, the students ate too much. The conclusion is that intellectual tasks and a sit-down work mode makes us fat. I knew it! You can read a very good resume on Tess Gerritsen's blog.

I've recently discovered Ms Gerritsen's books and romped through Vanish and Body Double.

The UK has been dumped upon these last ten days. Snow, ice and rain. But you know, here in the north-east, we've missed most of it. We had four inches or so the first day, but that vanished by the next morning and so far all I can say is that a couple of nights someone dusted our drive with icing sugar. The hills are capped with white, and it is cold, but we have sunshine and yesterday I took the picture of the new leaves because it looks like spring is here.

The rest of the country is either crippled with snow and ice, or deluged with the melted version.

How lucky can we be? and how long will our luck hold?

Snow

This time the forecasters were correct~we have snow, about 4 inches of it.

The kids were up and out early this morning. Luckily we have plenty of hills round about for them to sledge down. Neighbours turned out to push a car up the cul de sac always always the biggest hazard since we live on the side of a hill.

Both roadsters used to go up sideways, front wheels spinning while the back end slewed out. Time to get on with some work today and stay nice and cosy.

I wonder how much Rafa aches today?

Matterhorn

This is a view along the river that zips through Zermatt. It starts in one of the glaciers - if I had my ski map I could tell you which one but until I unpack completely I haven't a clue where anything is - so I'll just say there are at least three major glaciers and I think this stream comes from the Matterhorn glacier. It had snowed before we got there, so everything was pristine, white and smooth.

Easily ten thousand feet up, this shot is taken from the Kleine Matterhorn and stares straight down the valley into Zermatt. Remember you can click to enlarge the picture! Sunshine is glorious at this altitude because it keeps you warm, and enhances the whole world. There's nothing quite like a deep blue sky circling the mountain peaks and a white snowfield that feels like icing sugar beneath the skiis when you ski across it.

There are many crosses spattered around the mountains, and this one is right on the very top of the Kleine Matterhorn. It has a stark beauty against the deep blue of the sky, perched up there in the freezing cold and often howling winds at twelve thousand feet. The miracle of engineering that allows it is worth mentioning, too. Engineers have tunnelled half a mile through solid rock at the peak of the mountain to allow cable car access. After a nerve tingling ride across the glacier and a 90 degree ascent up the sheer north face of the mountain, the intrepid skier exits the cable car, walks through the tunnel and emerges blinking in the sunshine on the south side. (There is an ice grotto inside the glacier - more on that tomorrow.)

Step a few yards away from the entrance, enjoy the sun and you become aware of a huge presence on your right shoulder. You turn and there is the Matterhorn, sparkling in the sunshine. You catch your breath at its beauty - or you do if you are me. From the Kleine Matterhorn you ski down the slope with the icy cold air biting the back of your throat until you remember to shut your mouth. Then you feel the hairs in your nose freezing, and the bones of your face ache. The cold becomes terrifying, and then you break out into the sunshine once more, shift your balance and stop in a flurry of snow crystals dazzling in the sunlight as they drift back around you. Magic.

Squirrels in the snow

We had a dusting of snow yesterday. It was hard to tell if it was a severe frost or snow at times, but it certainly looked pretty and the temperature was minus 1.5C in the sun mid afternoon. We went to Wallington and had the beautiful grounds to our selves. I think we passed only a dozen people in two hours.

We saw this little squirrel foraging like crazy and I have lots of pics of them with heads down and tails up! The National Trust have taken down the feeding stations because they fear they spread the pox that the greys carry, which is good, but it means the little fellows - and they are little - have to work that much harder in this cold hard world.

This is the landscape in which they live. Overnight we've had more snow, and it is snowing as I look out of the window so I'm not going into town for shopping and lunch with a friend as planned. "Half and inch of snow in the UK and chaos ensues on the roads as every one drives as if they are an old-age pensioner" commented someone on the radio this morning, and much as I resent the Old Age Pensioner tag I have to admit it is true.

So it is back to work again. I'm running through Till the Day Go Down (the new title I've given Warden's Bride) before offering it to my publisher. I knew I needed a better title because the heroine never became the bride of a Warden, but it gave me a tag to hang on to until I thought of something better. The next thing is to try my hand at loglines for it. I find it really hard to condense the story down to one sparky sentence. "Confident Harry finds his mission and life endangered when he runs foul of Alina's brutal father. " Doesn't seem like enough, does it?

I have to add that I'm revelling in the ITV3 concentration on historical fiction this week. The Jane Austen films and tv specials are being re-run, and there's a lovely series on Costume Drama running alongside. It is a fascinating compilation of clips from old and new historical dramas from Brideshead to Sharpe via Pride and Prejudice. Wonderful! The only problem is deciding wether to watch The Devil's Whore, a new first showing of the Civil War story about Angelica Fanshaw or Billie Piper's Mansfied Park. What a choice - I opted for Angelica. It's pretty gory in parts, but the cast is good and the story sound.

Deer and Black Moments

I wrote here on 19th February that I was almost up to the Black Moment in my wip HD. Here I am, 15 days later, and still at the same point! What are my excuses? I have gone through the story again from page one because I wanted to check and change a small point to make the end of the story better. Also, having 3-day breaks kind of disrupts the flow and I wanted to make sure I was clear before I moved on. So, I am at that point NOW, so no more excuses. Once I have finished this, it's off to the wip.

The picture above captures a magical moment on the road from Loch Lugainn to the A835. Dh was driving, which freed me up to gaze out at the scenery and I saw a stag 100 yards away up the hillside. We stopped immediately, I got out the camera and wound down the window. The stags were lying about in the heather, and one by one got to their feet - six of them! They are so wary. In spite of the fact that we were so far away, by the time I had taken two or three shots they were all on their feet, shaking rain out of their coats and watching us suspiciously. Then one shot off up the hillside and the rest followed. My last picture is of an empty hillside with one rump disappearing behind a convenient rock!

I felt guilty for disturbing them. Driving down the A835 to Ullapool, I noticed more antlers sticking up above the skyline - another group. Now I wonder if they drifted down to the lower levels because they sensed the snow coming, for next day we drove south through horrendous rain and wind with visibility down to about ten feet on the busy A9. We saw flooded land around Aviemore and the Tay was very high. We got home to a weather report that promised snow over much of the Highlands, including Ullapool and by Saturday, the snow had arrived.

Perhaps those deer have a built in early warning system. I'm so glad we saw them.

Red Roses For Authors

Yesterday I joined a new group. It is the first time I have been in at the start-up and I hope it becomes a firm favourite with the 50 or so authors who have joined so far. If anyone is curious, here's the address: redrosesforauthors



Here in the north-east we are in the grip of some ferocious weather - high winds, and snow. I had an appointment in Newcastle today, and believe me, without it, I would not have set foot out of doors. The temperature veered between 0.5 and 4.5 as we drove into the city, and then reversed again as we drove home. The Tyne is in flood, heavy with thick brown waters swirling up among the trees on the bank. The old Victorian bridge is under pressure once more.



Here's hoping it survives. There's more snow and wind forecast for tonight and the next couple of days.

I know this is nothing compared to the weather some people endure, but for the UK, this is nasty. A time for lying low, getting out the old red wine and chatting to friends on the internet! We do not deal with Ice Roads across frozen lakes and temperatures of minus 40 Fahrenheit.

Bits and Bobs

I know I said I thought Letitia Dean woud depart Strictly last week, but I was only a week out. She went on Saturday night because Matt, who mucked everything up, got the sympathy vote.
He forgot the routine halfway through in both dances. Gethin was terrific again.

My new wip has reached Chapter Five in 17,000 words. Not bad. I got to thinking how many stories I've actually written, and it sounds good until I confess not all are published. Banners and Dark Pool are, of course; Shadows was, suffered a hiccup and is on offer again. The Viking story is still on offer as a full ms with HM&B, the Victorian story as a partial with them. My Tudor story is going through the critique group, and the new one is set somewhere around 1800 so I'll call it a Regency. So I'm on with my seventh. Oh, and I forgot the Canadian one, which is on offer with PsF. So that makes eight. Amazing.

Now all I need to do is sell some of them, or even better, all of them.

Tonight is is going to be cold, down to -3C (is that 24 degrees F? I'm not sure.) so I took some bubble wrap and wrapped it around my hydrangea. The poor thing is confused by the mild weather, for it already has tiny green shoots. I fear it is very vulnerable. It has suffered in frost before, but I'll keep my fingers crossed tonight. One of my roses, the Alec's Red, is still producing buds, yet we had sleet yesterday afternoon. The A68 between the English/Scottish border was impassable. I saw pictures on tv where lots of cars were in the ditch but I don't know where they were taken. We don't handle snow very well here in the UK. It's not the soft fluffy white stuff we see when we go skiing - it's horrible wet, slushy, slippery stuff. Ugh.