Actually, mentally at least, I have been away: visiting the sites I've chosen to use in the story through the wonders of Google Earth. As I mentioned last summer, I want to give Partridge and Marmalade an entirely imaginary place to live in, but as it is set in a real National Park, I feel I ought to at least try and make it sound like a plausible place: I do have several geography teachers among my readers! Several Ordinance Survey maps and a bit of cutting and pasting later, I'd managed to create a credible space which a) realistically works as a Scottish glaciated valley and b) combines lots of details of real places but is actually like nowhere real at all!
The discovery that many place names in Scotland are entirely descriptive - 'The lumpy mountain in the middle covered with heather' etc - added to the fun of the job. By Saturday, I had a rough sketch and a whole list of place names (which I then googled to make sure that they weren't actually the names of real places!) created with the help of my bible of a Scots language dictionary.
But has there been any movement on the writing front? Well, yes. I went back to my first 14,000 words, added 6,000 more, cut about 3,000 out and finally got my head round some of the problems of the plot - and had one sudden flash of inspiration which made me slap my forehead in astonishment that I'd never considered it before! It never ceases to amaze me that when you feel as if you are really floundering, that's when the best ideas pop up!
Finally, I'm reclaiming my Saturdays as G&P writing days and am determined to be well into the first draught once the holidays begin. I'm also detemined not to abandon you for another six months! I therefore promise to update this page at least once a fortnight and to use it to introduce you to the places where Partridge and co are gathering to solve this particularly bizarre set of crimes...
,,, oh, and to provide cake updates of course. Made a fabulous lemon drizzle cake last week, almost worthy of Mary!
