Trailer

Last year I created a rather low tech trailer for my book and I thought you might like to have a sneeky peak!  Every book is different and some just take more writing than others.  Because I've been plodding away at this one for so long, I knew I needed some way of keeping the mood and impetus going.  Whenever I get stuck, I play this through a couple of times and it helps to remind me of what I'm  supposed to be doing!  As a writing tool, I'm really rather pleased with it. As a piece of media, it's hardly going to win any Oscars.  Still, it was fun to make!  Obviously, I was being rather ambitious, thinking it might be August 14! Fingers crossed for 15 though!

Self-indulgence...

...has been the name of the game this week.  Half term and I've indulged in good food, excellent company, serious but not excessive drinking and even a trip to the cinema to see Casablanca on the big screen.  I've also spent a rather large amount of money on a ticket to see Sting in concert at Gateshead's Sage.  Because, as a lovely friend of mine is fond of telling me, you only regret the things you don't do!  Working on the same principle, there's another 4000+ words added to G&P 4.  Who knows?  It might yet get finished!  

2014 review

January 4^th already.  I’m back to the chalk-face in the morning and I am NOT looking forward to it.  I’m far too chilled out and Christmassy to contemplate having to cope with it being the start of a new term.  So instead of printing out the work for tomorrow’s classes, I thought I’d try and sum up my year – the year I didn’t actually blog much in!!  I actually didn’t feel sad to see 2014 go.  Maybe I’m just toughening up...or maybe it was something to do with all the accidents I seemed to have! 

BEST BOOK READ: I didn’t read much fiction this year, but ‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson gripped me from beginning to end... and then the next end and the next.  Clever lady!

BEST FILM: I can’t actually remember going to the cinema at all this year.  It’s a new year’s resolution...  On DVD, it would have to be a Buster – probably ‘The Cameraman’.
BEST SONG: No – don’t have one of those either.  What have I been doing with my life this year??  Maybe something from ‘Into the Woods’ – probably ‘Agony’.

BEST THEATRE MOMENT: Can manage this one – either David Tennant and Michael Pennington in Richard II at the Barbican last January or Richard Armitage in The Crucible. And then there was Jersey Boys at the Sunderland Empire.  Rather loved Propeller at the Theatre Royal too.  And Warhorse.  Oh and Antony Sher as Falstaff.  And...
BEST BALLET MOMENT(S): Jamie Bond in ‘La Fille mal Gardee’.  No contest.  (Apart from Iain MacKay in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at the Empire!)

BEST TV MOMENT: Again, nothing specific comes to mind, although I did really enjoy a very old Victoria Wood Christmas special over the holidays. 

BEST SILLY MOMENT(S): Buying a cowbell in Austria!  Staying up all night for the Scottish Independence Referendum, going to a Gin Festival with my lovely mad friend Pam.
MOST EMOTIONAL MOMENT: Jamie Bond, as above.  (I wept audibly.  And it’s got such a happy ending!) 
BEST PURCHASE(S): British Library Newspaper Archive subscription.  I am now addicted.
BEST CAKE: Mozart cake in Salzburg.
BEST NIGHT'S SLEEP: still Jury's Inn, Birmingham!!!  Best beds in the world!
BEST PLACE(S) VISITED: Salzburg, Venice, Stratford for the archives, Glasgow.
BEST CONCERT(S): Eddi Reader, on my birthday.  Love the woman!
BEST DECISION: My choice of dissertation topic!!!! Still!!!!
BEST DISCOVERIES: Carlucchio’s breakfasts, caramel waffles, intellectual ‘retreats’, Newcastle City Library.

BEST MOMENT(S): Oliver!, getting the feedback for my dissertation and knowing I’d proved something to myself, finally riding on the London Eye, arriving in Venice at sunset.

Happy New Year!

And I had such good intentions...

I'm an abject failure as a blogger!  Only four posts in a year!  Why on earth are you still reading?  I'd have given up long ago...Maybe you have...

Autumn news in brief, then. I've been to Austria with the school choir - cake capital of Europe! - and Venice with my mum - a special treat for her 'significant' birthday.  Both were amazing in totally different ways. I've had my teeth repaired - twice.  My lovely dentist says I'm not allowed to bite anything ever again.  I still have a bit of a black eye and a bad shoulder.  My new glasses cost about the same as a trip to Venice.  I've been to Birmingham a few times for ballet. I really miss being a Shakespeare Institute scholar. I'm trying to direct a production of 'Into the Woods'.  I discovered the joys of Gin Festivals.

See?  You haven't missed much.  Somehow it seems to be almost Christmas again.  The last G&P Christmas story was a staggering four years ago.  In frustration and grumpiness, I managed to scrawl over 4000 words of a new Christmas story on Saturday. I'm not promising anything will come of it, mind you.  But it's more than I've written in one go for a long time.

I have no time AT ALL between now and December 19th.  But... Don't give up on us just yet: who knows?  There might be a Christmas miracle!

Summer Time

Five weeks in to the holiday already.  I know you don't really want to know where I've been, or how my injuries have healed since the last post, or even what cakes I'm sampled.  You only really want to know if I've been writing...

Not where I am but where I'd like to be: 

can't manage to load any new pictures on to the blog for 

some reason so this lovely one from last year's Road Trip 

will have to suffice!  

I have.  23,000 words since July 30th  taking me to a total of about 73,000 words of the first draft.  It's all over the place at the moment though:  I've left out a big section in the middle and gone to the final third, which is really unusual for me because I usually write more or less chronologically.  However, no two books are the same - techniques which worked for one, refuse to work for others and this one, because of the amount of time I've taken to write it (it's been simmering for two whole years!), has been especially awkward.  I've spent so long in the past three years writing academic essays that fiction feels really strange. However, we're on a bit of a roll at the moment so I'm pressing on while I can to try and get at least 80, 000 done by the time I return to work in a little over ten days time.  Hamish is currently in a rather tight spot at present but I think he'll probably have to stay there until at least Saturday as the 'day job' needs attending to for the rest of this week.  Good job he's the understanding type...

In between writing, I've managed my annual trip up to the Edinburgh Book Festival, a fabulous visit to London to see The Crucible and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (strange bedfellows but both magnificent) and a stunning week in Suffolk where the weather was lovely and the cake was seriously good.  On the injury front, I'm almost back to normal - three of the four teeth have been repaired, I have new glasses and apart from some continuing  pain issues with my left shoulder and wrist, I'm otherwise fine.  (One alarming side effect, though, is that I've started to look at other people's teeth with a kind of macabre fascination.  In the case of Davina McCall, for example, I'm starting to suspect that I actually have celebrity tooth envy! )

Cake?  Well, it'll have to be a Betty's of York 'Fat Rascal' - they are utterly unique and wonderful served buttered with hot tea.  (I had to cut mine up into small bits of course, because I still can't bite!  Ah well.)  To sample them yourself by post (but regretfully only if you live in the UK)  visit http://www.bettys.co.uk/product/Yorkshire-Fat-Rascal-Scones-Box-of-4,19172,255.aspx

Pride goes before a fall...

It was the best of weeks, it was the worst of weeks... It started well: the mark for my dissertation and the overall grading of my MA came back and I was delighted (and not a little astounded) with the result.  I hadn't been at all sure that what I'd written was good enough, although I'd enjoyed every minute of writing it.  I now officially have two more letters to add to my name and, what's far more significant, the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to come up to the standard I'd wanted to reach.  There was a modest celebration - some wine, some chocolate, the reward of a couple of new books.  That was last Saturday.

Won't be using this one as
my new author picture!

By Wednesday, however, things took a dramatic change when, as a precursor to our sports day, I did the health and safety triple event  - the Trip, Slip and Fall.  To cut a long story short, I had a very nasty fall at work resulting in four broken front teeth, several stitches to my top lip, an impressive range of cuts and bruises on my face and some nasty whiplash.  Oh, and the second pair of glasses I've written-off since starting this job two years ago! 

I consider myself very lucky not to have been more seriously injured.  However, I'm facing a rather large dentistry bill, the huge expense of a new pair of glasses and the problematic issue of trying to eat without my four front teeth! 

The wonderful ladies I work with sent me the gorgeous flowers in the top photo. They couldn't have chosen better : there were roses and sea holly in the bouquet which was predominantly mauve and green: I like to think it's rather the way Marmalade's flowers were at the end of Scotch Pine.  They also sent me a rather good Jodi Picoult novel, which has kept me reading, even when my head was hurting!

Scotch on the Rocks progresses - it's grown about seven thousand words since May and hopefully, with the summer holiday on the horizon, it should double in size by September.  Just three weeks left to go till I can devote myself to the writing a bit more.  Let's hope the back and neck are recovered by then even if I'm still having to chop up food into 3cm pieces!

And we're back again!

Well, that was a mad five months.  But it's behind me now and so - this Saturday - the summer of writing starts.  I'd hoped for an August release for Scotch on the Rocks, but it will probably be January now.  However, with 42,000 words in the bag, it should be an interesting  couple of months: hald onteyer bonnets!