3 comments

Sweet Peas From My Garden

2010
07.20

Sweet peas from my garden

Sweet peas come very near the top of my favourite flower list, perhaps my favourite although I would hate to have to choose and can think of many others that hold a special place in my personal catalogue: cornflowers, old fashioned roses, lilac, cherry blossom, primroses, peonies….

What I love about sweet peas is their glorious, jewel- like colour and their sensational scent and I’m so pleased I planted a whole row in my garden this year. They have just begun to flower and this means I can pick them for the house and enjoy them all day – sweet peas love to be picked, in fact they insist on it. The more you pick, the more flowers appear – a cornucopia of delicate blossoms

My second novel, The Orchid House, reflected my love of flowers and gardens and was inspired by a visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. An editor at Bloomsbury said some good things about it and I often think of going back to it and using what I’ve learned – so much now-  to re-write it. I think one day I will…and the sweet peas will be there for sure.

The Flower Garden was set in rows of intense colour, spread out like a carpet made from rags of cotton and chintz. Protected behind walls of warm brick its sheltered beds threw up sweet, old-fashioned drifts of larkspur, cornflower and scabious, godetia and marigold.

Madeline stood against a row of cornflowers, a basket at her feet already half full with sweet peas and cosmos


Category Gardens, My Writing |

1 Comment

Making Books – A Day With Chloe

2010
07.18

The books I made at the workshop

The Hearth at Horsley (west of Newcastle) is a beautiful grade 2 listed building that houses eight working studios used by artists and musicians and a very friendly coffee shop selling heavenly scones (as well as other goodies).

On Saturday I spent the day there at a bookmaking course run by Chloe.  Chloe was a great tutor, very laid back but incredibly well prepared, so that we each came away having made three books and all clamouring for a follow up course. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The company was a real treat too – lovely people – as was the chocolate and almond cake Chloe made for our morning break. The course was fantastic value for money and utterly inspiring. I think I might be hooked on making books. As a writer I especially enjoyed the opportunity to do something practical rather than cerebral and know I definitely need more of this.

I found the course via New Writing North’s newsletter  – you can check out coming courses on The Hearth’s website (linked above).

Category Inspiration, Notebooks, Visual Arts, Workshops |

2 comments

Clear Thinking

2010
07.12

It’s been quite a week or more – ten days to be precise: back and forth to London twice – and in the heat, the Royal Albert Hall, the rolling hills of Surrey, countless motorway road works, champagne – twice, a party and a final show. All of this played out against the backdrop of a crazy man with a gun on the loose in Rothbury, the hitherto sleepy town, just up the road in Northumberland, where the sky was awash with helicopters and the countryside and streets flooded with armed police, armed vehicles and journalists from across the UK. On balance, last week, leafy Surry seemed a safe bet.

And the way it all finally ended – who says truth isn’t stranger than fiction?

On the subject of fiction – it’s a long game waiting to know the fate of your novel – about six months now — but I’m not complaining – it’s a game I’d much rather been in than not.

Thanks to the hard work of my agent my Danny Beck novel is still out there under consideration with both mainstream and independent publishers, and what has been really encouraging for me is that one editor already likes it very much. Unfortunately a deal is currently not possible for various reasons, however it bodes well for the future and I am so pleased that it has found such favour with an editor and her co-publishers. Someone in the publishing world believes in my novel and often (perhaps not in this case, although maybe – time will tell) one person is enough.

So back to waiting and writing of course – and back also to remembering the Seven Habits of Highly Unhappy People! one of my Clear Thinking weekly insights (if you want to find out more or subscribe then click the link) – the habits listed are Judging, Criticising, Complaining, Blaming, Arguing, Competing and Controlling (i.e. trying to control others)

OK so it’s impossible not to employ some of these habits some of the time, I know, but resisting them leads to a much more positive outlook and comes in very handy when you have to deal with rejection, disappointment or difficulty. Try it and see.

Category My Writing |

1 Comment

Katie

2010
06.29

Chair, wallpaper and floorboards

On Thursday I’m off to London to my daughter Katie’s convocation at the Royal Albert Hall – her graduation from a two year M.A. at the Royal College of Art. I am so proud and I have a hat to prove it!

I’m looking forward to seeing Katie’s final collection of wallpapers, chairs, printed floorboards and chests – I remain totally impressed by her originality and her immense hard work. She is my hero.

For more images and a review of Katie’s work go to Phillipa Wagner’s blog

Suspended chair

Category People, Visual Arts |

No Comments

When The Waiting Stops and the Writing Begins/ Fire and Ice

2010
06.26

While I wait to discover the fate of my first crime novel (some very encouraging developments so far but nothing concrete yet ) I’ve found it difficult to write. The waiting game is not easy but there is only one way to play it and that is to start work on the next novel. So far I’ve had a number of false starts and I’ve held off because it seemed presumptuous to begin a second novel with the same character- Private Investigator Danny Beck – at the center when the first has yet to be accepted. But the thing is I believe in him, and if I don’t believe in myself and my characters then who will?

There is much more to say about Danny Beck and a new story to explore, but most important of all it’s what I want to write, what I feel excited about and inspired by and its no good embarking on the long haul if you don’t feel fired-up. Which brings me to fire and ice and to volcanoes.

I have decided to open the novel (working title Fire and Ice) against the backdrop of the volcanic eruption beneath the glacier in Iceland, at the point at which it brings european air space to a standstill. This decision has sparked off a whole train of ideas and I have since been playing with the properties of fire and ice, both physical and metaphorical.

I like to have abstract themes underneath of what I write, for me this is one of the more playful aspects of writing. Today I have been thinking about which of my characters are fire: hot-headed, quick, angry and which ice: emotionally detached, slippery, lethal which of course applies to both elements. But more importantly I have been writing and sketching out the first ten chapters- and all of this is where the joy and pleasure of writing reside – and not in the waiting.

Writing Tip - What will it be about? I have learned that it’s a very useful exercise to write down in a matter of sentences and certainly no more than a paragraph what your novel is about – you can do this at any stage of the writing, it is always useful. It is not as easy as it sounds. It is not about telling the story but about capturing the essence, its heart, more like the blurb you read on the back of published novels. For instance I might begin – Fire and Ice is about one man’s quest for justice…

You need to be able to do this because if you don’t know what the  novel is about how can you expect your reader to know.

Category Crime, My Writing, Writing your novel |

No Comments

Discovering John Harvey

2010
06.22

I have a confession to make – this year, on the recommendation of a friend, I discovered John Harvey – a little late I hear you say – or maybe not? Maybe like me you’ve come more recently to crime fiction and have yet to read him in which case you are in for a treat. While I was in France I read Lonely Hearts, the first in the Charlie Resnick series and I fell in love with the man, and of course with his three cats: Dizzy, Miles and Pepper. Dizzy, by the way, is a hooligan who if he were human Resnick suspects  would ‘spend days meandering drunkenly around shopping centres,’ splashing  ‘through municipal fountains with a red and white scarf dangling from his belt.’

So what’s so good about John Harvey? In the first place there’s the writing itself: elegant and witty, Harvey paints a rich canvas, making us see everything. It’s a visual treat. Then there are the characters: beautifully drawn especially Charlie Resnick, a man who cares about victims, about those on the bottom of the heap and a man who cares about women. Charlie Resnick likes women! Place is here too and the whole is deliciously downbeat – definitely my kind of music!

John Harvey loves Jazz that’s his kind of music and he’s a poet too. His 1998 collection Bluer Than This which I’ve just started reading shows the influence of jazz and painting on his writing – Roland Kirk, Chet Baker, Edward Hopper, Pierre Bonnard. The poems are tender, about love and loss, straight from the heart – my kind of poems too!

One last thing – John Harvey blogs. YES! This  seems to me to make him instantly inclusive – inviting as it does comment and dialogue. He’s not too grand despite being the Master of British Crime – just can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find him.

Category Crime, Poetry, Reading |

4 comments

Returning to Agde

2010
06.19

It is still there – the place and the people I spent two months living in and around last year. Of course it is. Agde has been there for two and half thousand years, one of the very oldest towns in France. So why would it not be waiting  just as before?

Going back was emotional for all kinds of reasons ( I shed a tear on arrival, on seeing Wendy) – it had been such a creative time, it had been time out, a watershed, a new found freedom, the beginning of  a new life – and so I guess I was fearful that it wouldn’t live up to its former promise. I need not have worried, Agde offered all of these propects still, and meeting up with friends Alan and Nira and acquaintances like the lovely lady in the Cafe Capitaine- Thaus – which means peacock in Algerian- only served to reinforce my sense of belonging.

Nothing had changed, except me and I was suddenly very aware how in returning we are inevitably looking from a different place.

This is a second draft of my poem from this year’s visit – I will continue to work on it once I’ve put it away and forgotten it

The Weather In The Streets

A cold wind blows unseasonal rain at my back.

Nothing has changed but the weather in the streets,

this thin clothed June  stripped of sun still whispers

in my ear, stirs the foreign tongue, amphorae

pulled from the the mouth of the sea, from the pea-green

Herault precious boody* washed smooth in memory’s drum

past the rub of sea bed silt that breaks piece by

piece the blue glass vase, while above

in this year’s rain geraniums grow tall, blood red

burning against the basalt of before. Nothing has changed

but the mirror I hold to memory’s face, its fragments and

the place I look back from, the pot of last year’s wine.

* Boody is small pieces of collected treasure – shells, glass etc

Fortunately for us Agde is west of Marseille – I was shocked and saddened to hear of the floods and  the loss of life further along the coast in Draguignan and the surrounding area, the news was just breaking as I made my way back to England

Category France, Poetry |

1 Comment

To France …

2010
06.08

The brocante market in Agde - every Wednesday

This time last year I was already 5 weeks into my French trip. Tomorrow I’m off to Agde again, just a flying visit – only a week – but a chance to catch up with friends, soak up the southern sun, walk beside L’Herault and the Canal du Midi, re-accquaint myself with the nightingales and the bee-eaters, haunt the markets for linen and lace, idle over cafe au lait and croissant, choose a new notebook in the papeterie, talk up a storm over the vin rouge … and more, much more – to get the real flavour of Agde take a look at my French archive…May and June 2009

Category Uncategorized |

2 comments

The Writing Game

2010
05.31

Tomorrow nights Writing Game features a not to be missed conversation with crime writer Ann Cleeves  recorded when Wendy and I met up with her at the Hexham Book Festival. The Writing Game is broadcast on 105.9  FM at 7pm – 8pm and should be available as a podcast within a day or two at the Bishop FM website.Inspiring for both writers and readers – do tune in!

Category Crime, Inspiration, Radio |

4 comments

Sunday at Wolf Hall

2010
05.23

Queen of the Night Tulips in my garden

Suddenly it’s summer – the buttercups have grown high in the field of cows, the tulips I planted last October are fading and the grass on our newly seeded lawn is just showing through.

With temperatures in the high 20s and the day being Sunday what better excuse for idling the day away with a glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc and a copy of Hilary Mantel’s dazzling epic – Wolf Hall.  Exquisitely and bravely written it compels us to feed on the dark meat of HenryTudor’s England; the blood and guts, the political intrigue, the King’s lust, the continent’s despair, and through it all the rise of Cromwell, the most powerful of Henry’s courtiers -  spin doctor to beat all spin doctors, (Peter Mandleson eat your heart out ) – the enforcer – as much  a man of our time as his own, a rich and complex character, both villain and hero.

‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’

The novelist, says Mantel, ‘lives inside the consciouness of her characters…’ and  ‘…agrees just to move forward with her characters walking into the dark.’

I recommend walking into the dark with Hilary Mantel – so much to enjoy- Wolf Hall is unputdownable and so much to learn about wriitng fiction.

Category Reading |

« Older Entries