Titles and squirrels

Since Monday I've discovered there are at least two other books with the title Blood Feud, so maybe I'd better think of another title. I own one of them. It's non fiction by Richard Fletcher - murder and revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. He spells it as one word. The one I saw on Amazon yesterday is a crime thriller, Mafia style feuding. So. along with the hunt for a better cover, I'll hunt for a better title!

Went out for an early morning twenty minutes on the field behind the house and discovered how warm it is in the sun now. The grass is lush and green, everything is growing like crazy and it's a pleasure to be out walking. A squirrel darted along the fringe of the woods. Tim bounded after it. I wasn't sure what he would do - he hasn't actually caught anything yet, though he has finally begun to see and chase rabbits. The squirrel chose the wrong tree - one with a smooth bark - and couldn't climb. Tim chased it round the tree, snacking at it. I feared the worst when it lay on its back, quite still, little paws, with those long claws, limp on its chest.

Tim sniffed at it, but didn't volunteer to eat it. I grabbed his collar and pulled him of it. The squirrel picked itself up and stumbled away, went to another tree and vanished. I think it went up into the tree, but Tim was yelping and struggling to get after it and I didn't actually see what it did. I hope it got away. Such a little beauty. I fear we managed, between the three of us, to squash a few bluebells that have sprung up and into flower this week. I hate squashing growing things. Must be a Buddhist at heart.

Northumberland and loglines

I needed two pictures and even then couldn't show the whole of the landscape I could see as I stood there in late afternoon sunshine at minus 2 degrees. Nor could I get this silly blog format to publish them side by side, which is what I wanted. However, this is Northumberland, folks, looking west five or six miles north of the Tyne valley where the land starts to rise to the Border hills. Smack in the middle of the one on the left is some sort of ruin perched on top of a small rounded hill. It is listed on the map as Ancient Homestead and Dovecot, doesn't even have a name. We drove right by it as we continued home from Wallington and these little chaps.


Work continues on Till the Day Go Down. I went through yesterday and added costume detail where I thought it would enhance the scene. Today I'm thinking about landscape, though I think I've layered that in as I went but it wouldn't hurt to check. Anything to make the scene REAL to the reader.

As for loglines....here are my next efforts: "Christian Emer, kidnapped and sold as a slave to Pagan Viking Flane, thinks of nothing but escape and refuses to sleep with him unless he marries her."
Didn't seem right, so tried again:
"Pagan Viking Flane buys Christian Emer as bedmate and then finds he must either rape or marry her before his future wife gets rid of her for good."

H'mmm. More interesting, but not exactly polished. More thought needed.

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.

Too many eggs

Another view taken on our walk at Wallington. My local newspaper tells me that 20,000 grey squirrels have been culled in Northumberland this year in order to save the native red. We didn't see any leaping about at Wallington but then there were so many people and dogs walking that any self-respecting squirrel would be miles away. The greys, brought here in Victorian times, weigh three times as much as the red and eat three times as much. They also carry a disease that is lethal to reds, but there is hope that some of the native species have deloped an immunity.

I hope to have the cover art for FAR AFTER GOLD in about ten days, and then I can display it here and other places. Such excitement! Also I've finished off my attempt at a novella for the UNDONE series. That 13,000 words went off today.
Now I must concentrate on Daisy's story, which seems to have lost the plot around chapter 8, and read through Warden's Bride. (second edition with older heroine.) Sometimes I wonder if I'm trying to juggle too many eggs at one time...
All this sitting at a computer leads to wide hips and general unfitness in my case, so I am making a special effort to walk up the hill to Prudhoe every day. If not every day, then several times a week. It is too easy to look out of the window, see the rain and decide to stay indoors. Lately when I walk up the hill, I've had to stop more than once to ease the ache in my chest. So yesterday and today off I went. Monday I did a mile on the stationary bike - that has to count for something!