I'm really sorry...

...but there's not going to be a Grouse and Partridge story this Christmas!

I tried.  I really did.  I had quite a good idea and I was desperate to write it.  But time has been my enemy: I'm weighted down with work from uni and work from work and there aren't enough hours in the day to do what I ought to be doing, let alone what I want to.  There've been several casulties in the run up to Christmas but this is the one that hurts me the most.  My Christmas holiday looms but brings with it little prospect of respite: two 4,000 word essays required by January and not a clue how to approach either of them yet.  For the first time this term, I've begun to wonder if the course is worth the effort - and yet the part of the course I most want to do is next term's unit and to give up now would be costly and pointless.

So my characters are languishing in the mirk and cold of my rapidly disintergrating brain, looking mournful and unloved as Christmas approaches because I cannot bring them back to life.  Tonight, I wonder if this is the end of the line for my writing altogether: I think I've been deluding myself since Scotch Pine that I was just between books.  In fact, I think I'm stuck.  I realise I've stopped thinking of myself as someone who writes.  I'm just someone, once again, who used to...

Autumn Days



1907 glass in Sunderland Empire Theatre

It's now eight weeks on and I'm sorry to have kept you in suspense...  I think it is safe to say that the last eight weeks have been some of the hardest of my career so far not because I'm in a difficult school - far from it - but because starting a new job really does feel like starting from scratch again and because I hadn't realised how much damage had been done to my self esteem and self confidence over the past few years.  I've never worked as hard as I've done this term and although I've really enjoyed it, I am seriously ready for a break next week.  I know I have definitely chosen the best place to teach: my new school does serious cake related activities - in eight weeks there've been three cake related incidents of note and a further one concerning chocolate!!

 

It hasn't all been work: I've embarked on the second year of my MA (and am already seriously behind with the work!), there's been a wonderful trip to London to meet up with a very special friend briefly over from the States, a birthday (number now censored because it's starting to be scary!), a joyous three days of ballet last week when the 'team' came back to town ( and where the sun on Saturday was so glorious I was able to take this photo!) and last night a most surreal visit to Durham Cathedral, of all places, to hear Ian Rankin and PD James in discussion: I say hear because we couldn't really see either of them from where we were!!  Thick, mysterious fog engulfed us as we came out and walked down into town - Durham at night is so evocative!

 

Grouse and Partridge have taken on a life of their own on the internet, selling a very respectable number of copies across September and October, and the fabulous review of Scotch Mist FelePain posted in August has now been joined by an equally glowing review of Scotch Broth.  Kindle has been a revelation and I finally received my first payment from them at the beginning of September for £19!  More than I've had from Lulu over the years!!

 

And the new book?  Lies in piles of scribbled paper I'm afraid - it's not that I don't want to write it, it's just finding the brain-space to do so. I feel a responsibility to the characters and their readers.  But at the moment, I just don't know when I'm going to be able to take up the challenge again and allow myself the chance to write anything else.  Last night just brought it home: if you call yourself a writer, you should at least be trying to write, shouldn't you?

 

September already...

As we've reached the end of the month, I thought I'd do a bit of statistic crunching.  According to Amazon, 28 copies have been sold across all titles in August, which is an amazing 60% increase on July's sales!  The power of a positive review knows no bounds!

Today is the last day of my holidays.  Tomorrow I start a brand new job and hopefully a brand new lifestyle will accompany it!  I'm certainly going to have a lot more time to myself which has to be an enormous bonus.

It's been a lovely holiday: it has flown past but it's brought lots of good things with it and I'm starting tomorrow in a more positive frame of mind than I've started an autumn term for a very long time.  Fingers crossed...

My hundredth post!

Amazing!  I've been blogging for 100 posts!  How time flies!  I can't imagine I've ever had 100 things worth saying, so I must apologise for the rot I've been writing here!  However, since it is my 100th post, I thought I'd better have something worth reporting...

As of this morning, all the Grouse and Partridge Christmas books have been uploaded to Kindle and they should be available at the princely sum of 75p each from tomorrow.  Not that I imagine anyone in their right mind wants to read a Christmas story in August, but I couldn't guarantee I'd have enough time to format them when December comes!  Once they're on the website, I'll add links here.

I don't think there will be a Christmas story this year - although I do have a plot fermenting - largely because of the new job/on-going degree course/full length G&P in progress at the moment.  I know I'm gaining lots of extra time by not commuting, but I will need to eat and sleep as well!

I've spent a lot of time this week mentally furnishing Hamish's wee cottage (found some lovely tweed covered chairs I really adore and since I can't afford them for myself, he might as well have them!!!) and sorting out old files and computer discs.  In the process I came across several parts of chapters from Scotch Mist which didn't make it into the final cut - maybe one day I'll do an 'unabridged' version!

The new book has reached 12,000 words and is, so far, being interesting and reasonably easy to write: just wish I could stretch out the last of the summer to the 20 000 mark - I'd feel happier about it if I could!

Best cake : In Whitby last week so had to have some Yorkshire Brack (a kind of sticky tea loaf!) from Elizabeth Botham's bakery in Skinner Street.  Gorgeous with butter and a cup of their tearoom blend coffee.  She does mail order too... YUM!

Grouse and Partridge Country part 2 :The Naming of Parts

Where exactly are we??

When I first started writing the Grouse and Partridge stories, I didn't really put much thought into where they would be set and it never occurred to set them in a  real place, because the things I was describing were so far fetched.  I was hardly setting out to write a ground-breaking police proceedural - I just wanted to have some fun with genre cliches!

This has actually been really useful over the years because it has enabled me to change and shape Murkshire as I've gone along.   As I've needed places for the stories I've invented them - Murkhaven, Murkbury... a bit like 'Midsummer' in 'Midsummer Murders' - all you need to add is the ending!!  Slowly I've build up a sort of county map in my head although it probably makes no geographical sense at all. Murkton itself is a probably a bit like Hull, where I lived for three years, mixed with parts of Birmingham.



Nuff said!!

With the new book, however, I hit a dilemma.  It's got to be based in Scotland because that's where Hamish is living.  I'd always been coy about naming his 'wee glen' except to say its in The Trossachs (and to be honest, I picked the Trossachs because it sounded vaguely rude!  I didn't realise until I went there that it is so lovely!!!)   Not that I was expected hoards of G&P fans to descend on some little hamlet I'd accidentally named, you understand, but I just felt I didn't need to be that specific when it would only concern one or two scenes.

In 'Scotch Pine' I wanted to name Killin and the Falls of Dochart because of the MacNab connection and I really tried to make it as close to reality as I could get.  At the end of that book I mention Hamish working in Callendar for part of the week, simply because I'd found the police station there and it looked just right for him, but I didn't want him to have to live in a real place all the time.  (I don't, so why should he?)

So, this summer, I am creating my very own Scottish Glen.  Armed with Ordinance Survey maps, I've taken the best bits of all the glens and lochs round the area and hopefully created an arena for my characters to explore. It is somewhere on the fringes of the Trossachs, surrounded by romantic hills, it has a large loch with three settlements on its shores of varying sizes, the largest being a bit of a tourist centre for walkers, sailers and the like.  There's  neolithic standing stones nearby and the remains of a Roman fort, a bit of a deserted castle along the road, some forestry, waterfalls... you get the picture!!  It's all very lovely!

But - what to call it?  Well, Murkton was easy: I just wanted somewhere that sounded bland, boring and a bit dull. ( And I'd always liked 'Mirkwood' in The Hobbit).  However, Scottish places have fabulous sounding names with silent letters and lovely Gaelic suffixes and prefixes.  I thought about just making something up by shoving bits of names together - like Auchterauderpittenmuchty - but nothing really worked on paper.

Browsing the books in the Edinburgh Book Festival Tent last week, however, I came across a rather lovely book which demystifies Scottish Place Names and has a really useful list of said prefixes and suffixes.  On my return, I found and downloaded a 19th century book on the same subject which goes into it all in some detail and is really fascinating.  Armed with these and my trusty Scots dictionary I'm inching towards naming all the places on my rather sketchy map.  And funnily enough, it's much easier to write about them when I've named them!

Watch this space for further developments...!




One of my photos - Loch Lomond I think..

WOW!

A  whirlwind 14 hour trip to Edinburgh for the Book Festival today, the highlight of which was Ian Rankin reading, for the first time ever, from his BRAND NEW REBUS NOVEL which doesn't come out till November! AMAZING!!!!

Didn't even mind when the sunshine turned to 'biblical' rain and we got soaked on route to the pub afterwards!  Home now, tired but too wired to sleep! Suspect I may have over done the caffine and the book purchasing in equal measure!

Is it Gloria's Twelfth or her Thirteenth?

Like the Ides of March and Julius Caesar, Grouse has a rather superstitious dislike of the so-called 'Glorious Twelfth' - the day the grouse shooting season begins.  This year, however, it falls not on the 12th of  August but the 13th (unlucky for the grouse!) because the 12th is a Sunday. 

Personally, I prefer my grouse alive and clucking, my Grouse riding on a vintage Bonnie and my 'Famous Grouse'  in a glass with some ginger ale and just a splash of water. 'Gloria's Twelfth' is, of course, Hamish.  Her thirteenth (unlucky for both of them!) is Allan...

Have returned from holiday with several nasty insect bites, with sunburned ears, even more more new books and the desire to make a Suffolk inspired patchwork cushion.  I've been today and bought the fabric and am starting to draw out the pattern.  The new novel has grown a bit too! 

Best cake on holiday?  Well we bought rather a nice fruit one in the Budgens supermarket in Woodbridge and another rather nice Toffee and Fudge one at Snape Maltings.  But my favourite - for ambience, hugeness of portion and quality of accompanying tea, has to be the Victoria Sponge in the National Trust tea shop at Flatford.  Constable views and mischevious ducks just completed the experience!