Dec 31 2018

2018 review

Not a lot of words here, but it was an event-filled year in many ways.

January to March saw our front garden being remodelled – hedges ripped out, fencing installed and a new garden layout. And then the Beast from the East arrived just after the new plants were installed. (This is photo in the back garden – miraculously all the plants survived.) snow_2018

In April we visited Shibden Hall for the first time (only having lived in the area for 24 years!) – just before it closed for the filming of the Anne Lister story, Gentleman Jack.

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My fifth year as a volunteer excavator at Vindolanda took place over two weeks in May. Many exciting discoveries as usual.

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June 1st was the release date for my eighth published novel, Calling Home. Later in the month, I submitted novel number 9 to Affinity Rainbow Publications. (It was accepted and is due out in February – cover reveal and blurb coming soon!)

Calling Home

In July we visited Settle to view the Flowerpot exhibits – many wonderful creations spread throughout the village

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My 7th novel, Changing Perspectives was a finalist for a Goldie Award at the GCLS Conference in Las Vegas.

2018 Goldie Finalists: Changing Perspectives in General Fiction – and short stories included in each of the finalists in the Anthology category (Winner: Our Happy Hours)

August was also a busy month with the Happy Valley Pride Festival and another successful Lesbian Writers Read event. This was followed a few weeks later with the inaugural European Lesbian Literary Conference (ELLCon) in Bristol. And we managed to fit in a trip to Manchester to see the magnificent bee sculptures.

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In September I took the initiative and contacted Gay’s the Word bookshop in London to see if they would be interested in stocking some of my books. (They were – and here they are pictured on a shelf, next to Ali Smith’s books!)

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We visited Bolton Abbey in October. The last time I was there would have been many years ago with my grandparents.

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November was a time for reorganising and redistributing books as we had new carpets and flooring installed throughout the house.

All this leading up to Christmas and a fantastic five days spent at a country house hotel on Lake Windermere. We’ve spent seven Christmases now in similar locations in the Lake District. (Where do you think I got some of the ideas for a house party in Christmas at Winterbourne?)

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Looking forward to 2019…and more adventures, more reading, more writing…and just more living!

Jan 19 2018

First blog of 2018

My first blog of 2018, almost three weeks into the new year…

What have I been doing with that time? Well, it’s a sort of semi-hibernation. Gone are the days of making resolutions I’m not going to keep…wasted gym memberships, home exercise regimes, diets, lists of household chores. However, I have been doing some reading, a bit of writing, planning some holidays for later in the year.

On the writing front, a new story is starting to take shape. But this is the gestation period. And I know I can’t rush it. The ideas are coming through…slowly but surely.

This week though it’s mainly been weather-watching. Every day we’ve been told it’s going to snow. Reports on the news of disaster on the roads, power cuts, trains and buses cancelled, airports closed.

Two snowflakes indicate heavy snow showers. (Not so far today!)

The BBC Weather app shows snow for us today, as this screenshot from yesterday shows. Well, wherever the snow is falling, it’s avoiding this part of the region. Rain, a bit of sleet, I can see a smattering of snow on the hills but here in the valley we have none.

Maybe I should be grateful we’re not suffering any ill effects from the weather but I can’t help feeling disappointed to look out the window and see that it’s only raining… again.

Apart from the no-show snow, life goes on. In a few months time I’ll be heading back up to Vindolanda for my fifth year of digging on the site. Last year, only a few weeks after my session ended, a lucky volunteer found a sword. Someone else came across more writing tablets. I hope they’ve left something for me to find.

Can’t wait to get stuck in!

In June we have a golf holiday booked, a week in East Lothian playing on some of their very fine courses.

This was in August on a previous occasion – hope it’s a bit warmer in June this year.

The month of August is looking particularly busy. There’s the week long Happy Valley Pride Festival in Hebden Bridge from the 6th to the 12th. Lots of activity over the coming months as preparations gear up.

Then ELLCon. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth talking about it again. The very first European Lesfic Literary Conference is being held in Bristol on 23/24 August. Take a look at the website to see how the programme is shaping up and book your place. The site also has useful information about accommodation options in the city.

Earlier this month, I was featured on the EllCon Author Spotlight page and gave away a signed copy of Changing Perspectives. The winner was Amy Barr from Pennsylvania. I’m guessing she won’t be attending the conference, so I was certainly happy to send her a book.

Book cover images used for ELLCon Author Spotlight promo

On the book front…June is the proposed date for the release of my next novel, Calling Home. This one is very different from any of the others. A bit of mystery involved, but not a detective novel. Still a fair bit of romance.

Also, if you haven’t yet read The Starling Hill Trilogy, now is your chance to pick up all three books for the price of one. My lovely publisher, Affinity Rainbow Publications, released the omnibus edition on not just Amazon, but also Bella Books, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. It has been available on the Affinity website for some time. They’re very generous like that and it’s worth visiting their site to check out all their authors, and a good number of free books.

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Happy reading for January and the rest of the year!

Book Links:

Changing Perspectives: Affinity Rainbow Publications / Amazon US / Amazon UK / Bella Books / Barnes & Noble / Smashwords

The Starling Hill Trilogy Omnibus edition: Affinity Rainbow Publications / Amazon US / Amazon UK / Bella Books / Barnes & Noble / Smashwords

Jan 16 2017

Resolutions and Repetitions

I gave up making New Year resolutions some years ago. No point in putting pressure on myself to achieve things I’ll likely give up on in the first few weeks. Several friends have decided to do a ‘dry January’. One of them is now suffering from headaches, withdrawal-type symptoms. The other one lasted three days. I’m with her.

Plus, I’ve got 5 bottles of whisky to start making inroads on. All Christmas presents, two from my beloved and the three-bottle F&M selection from my brother. My resolution, should I decide to make a belated one, could be to finish these by the end of the year. (My wife is Scottish, but hates whisky – so I’m on my own with this one!)

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I was asked fairly recently—by a young man—whether it was necessary to drink a lot to be a published author. I guess he was thinking of someone like Hemingway. I do most of my writing in the morning when the only liquids I’ve consumed are orange juice, coffee and water (in that order).

Non-resolutions aside, my first task of 2017 has been to try and finish another novel. So last week I read through the first draft of my current work-in-progress and marked areas that needed attention as well as spotting repetitions. Using the handy ‘Find’ feature in Word, I discovered I had used ‘then’ 144 times in a word count of just over sixty-one thousand. So that was an hour of my life gone as I worked through the document to reduce the total number.

Then, I moved onto the second word I had noted. This time 209 instances of the word ‘well’ were found. Well, well, well!

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It seems I have a habit of starting dialogue with this word. “Well, isn’t this fun?” I suspect this stems from my own conversational tic. When I’m uncertain of what I’m going to say, I will probably use ‘well’ as a stalling device. Less obvious than a stuttering ‘um’ or ‘er’, perhaps. But not if overused.

So, another hour or so passed as I went through the document discarding ‘well’ wherever it appeared. As with ‘then’, I left some in.

‘Usual’ was another high scorer in my repetition league table but not as high as ‘well’ or ‘then’. I was pleased to find I had only used ‘wetness’ twice and ‘wet’ fourteen times. I thought I could get away with the latter as the story is set in the UK and some of the ‘wet’ words refer to the weather.

On my next read-through, I’m sure I’ll find plenty more repetitious words but I’m hoping not as many as this time. Maybe I should just put the whole document through a word cloud generator.

Back to the writing now to knock this WIP into shape. Then I can submit it and…well, hope for the best.

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