Kathleen has been posting at What Am I Reading? consistently since 2009. She has far reaching and diverse taste.. ‘I read very widely, everything including serious literary fiction and non-fiction, young adult, chick-lit, frothy romantic fiction, poetry, crime/thrillers (a particular addiction), politics, eco-philosophy, travel etc etc.’ Referring to Coleridge’s description of himself as a ‘literary cormorant’ Kathleen says, ‘This blog reflects my own interests and is a kind of literary serendipity – or cormorant’s lunch, if you like!’

I like to think of it more as a cormorant’s feast, as every time I dive into its enticing waters I come up with several new and often surprising catches. Currently these include recent recommendations (you will find links on Kathleen’s site) the memoir - Twelve Minutes of Love – Kapka Kassabova and S.J. Parris historical crime – Prophecy, both are on my current ‘to read’ list. But I read less than Kathleen and I’m constantly in awe of the sheer amount of reading she does. I suspect she doesn’t have a TV or else is very good at ignoring it! There are of course many more recommendations here, to suit all tastes and among them the latest e-books. There’s a very useful ‘Find Books and Topics Section,’ which is testament to the scope of the blog and a more personal list in, ‘Contemporary Books I Love.’

But perhaps what I like best about following such a longstanding and knowledgeable blog, by a writer with a passion for books and for reading and writing alike – see also Kathleen’s writing blog – This Writing Life - is the discoveries you make which you know will last a lifetime. For me the latest of these is poet Robert Hass and I have Kathleen and her wonderful blog to thank for introducing me to his work. If you take a look at Kathleen’s blog now you’ll be in time to discover Robert Hass’s The Apple Trees at Olema and who knows you might become a fan too.

Great Book Blogs 2 – will feature ‘Wendy’s Love Affair With Books’ Wendy Robertson

The journey to Richmond from Wandsworth Common, currently leafy and green and awash with cow parsley, was unexpectedly crazy. We shared the train packed in like the proverbial sardines with spectators on their way to the rugby sevens at Twickenham. It was a seventies inspired fancy dress event: curly wigs and platform boots – only in London! That said everyone was incredibly friendly and good natured.

The river walk was beautiful, the whole day seemed special from beginning to end – best of all was spending quality time with our daughter and her partner and simply having fun! It was one of those days that you just know will stay with you…..

In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away -shing xiong

It rained a lot in the West Country where I grew up and I like weather to be weather – let it rain, or storm or shine but not be indifferent. As a young reader fed on Thomas Hardy’s novels I loved both weather and place in my stories. So it’s perhaps no surprise that now as a writer I find place and weather inspiring, and both feature large in my writing…

The Sweet Track  is set in the unique landscape of the Somerset Levels and the city of London, the story is told in a year as the seasons turn and the summer becomes the hottest since records began.Blood Tide, my recent crime novel, is set in the northern city of Newcastle in the depths of winter.

THE ORCHID HOUSE being no exception, is set in the confines of a great garden. Inspired by a visit to Cornwall’s Lost Gardens of Heligan it charts the seasons and the gardening year. Here is something of the garden and rain as seen through the eyes of two of the main characters; Madeline and Roma

Madeline ‘stood on the terrace, beneath the umbrella of the hornbeam looking out, through the grey pencil strokes of a spring shower, over the Long Garden and towards the sea. The peonies were flowering in the borders bursting from their blind buds. Eyes of apricot and pink had spilled into flounces of thirsty blossom. She waited for them each year, anticipating the extravagance of cutting them for the table; filling glass bowls and watching a circle of petals grow like a wreath to love. Peonies belonged to the summer. Like Harry they flowered early but were cut down too soon….’

‘The rain enticed Roma from work. It was tropical in its intensity, falling as it did with the promise of sun to come and a greener garden. She stepped out into the courtyard and stood by the tulip pots letting the rain fall on her, wearing no protection until her shirt and her hair were soaked…’

When the rain stopped Roma took her camera out into the garden … ‘In the Orchard the dark wood of the trees had swollen black with rain. Their knotted arms disappeared into clouds of pink and white blossom, weighted with water and dipping into the long grass where flower cups lay stranded in a veil of Queen Anne’s lace…’

A USEFUL WRITING TIP – if you want to keep weather threaded into your novel keep a weather diary. I wrote the first draft of Blood Tide – set in a cold northern winter – during two months in the South of France but I used my weather diary, made the previous winter, of daily notes reflecting on the weather – it only takes 5-10 mins but gives you genuine observation and some great lines.

Enjoy the rain! Sing! It’s good for the garden

It’s just a great number…………….

‘I want to do with you what Spring does with cherry trees.’ Pablo Neruda -

‘Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blosoms.’ Ikkyu Sojun

Before I started keeping this journal I wrote a short story Tokyo Dreaming inspired by the Japanese Cherries in the Botanic Gardens – Structo Literary Magazine will be publishing it soon!

When I started writing Blood Tide I hadn’t intended it to be a crime novel, but as it became clear that it was crime through and through I found myself turning to crime writers I admired for some help along the way. How had they done it so successfully I wanted to know?

In particular I looked at Henning Mankell author of the Wallander series, as I liked the understated but real characters he created, his acute sense of place and weather, and the way he was not afraid to express his social conscience.

In thinking about Mankell  I realised why I’d come to write Blood Tide in the first place –  because as I writer I enjoyed evoking place and atmosphere, creating understated characters (perhaps too understated at times) yet could never get away from my conscience especially as far as the plight of abused women was concerned. It seemed we had more than one thing in common and so with Mankell at my side (and I make no apology for using the best as models) I proceeded into the world of my Private Investigator, Danny Beck.

Here are 5 key things I learned along the way – and which I fully intend to take with me to my next novel.

1. Less is more when it comes to describing place, weather, etc – it can all be done in a line or two – you just need to slip these lines in regularly to keep the winter/summer /city …whatever in the reader’s mind.
2. Character is everything and although characters might be understated your protagonist  should never be passive – he/she must act.
3. Dialogue is key to the pace of a novel  (especially if it’s crime) and needs to be authentic and sharp – readers rarely skip dialogue.
4. A hook at the end of the chapter really cranks up the pace and keeps the reader reading
5. As John Irving, who I’ve recently quoted says, you must write for the reader and never to amuse yourself  - so rather like character story is also everything.

My mother was a dressmaker who earned her living making clothes for other people, as well as herself, and our house was always full of sewing: yards of fabric, tissue paper patterns, buttons, facings, pins, tape measures, sylko… and the ever present whirr of the treadle – and later the electric – sewing machine. In these poems I’ve been exploring the person she was and my relationship with her.

In my collage, as well as using printing techniques, I’ve incorporated vintage patterns, remnants from my daughters bespoke wallpapers, silk thread and text from my poetry. I’m hoping to develop some pieces to form part of an exhibition next year.

From Selkie

…but your silver dress hung, seal skin on dry land until

the day I opened the wardrobe to find it gone

I doubt these beautiful tulips in the Botanic gardens have survived the rain...

In the north it’s rather grey and wet, not the best of weekends but I hope you have a good one, wherever you are. And if you’re writing here is a piece of top drawer advice from the author John Irving (something which took me at least two books to realise!)

‘I always try to think when I am writing of someone I do not know. The age of this unknown person is always either elderly and impatient in the way that elderly people can be impatient, or quite young, maybe too young to drive a car, 15, a difficult age, and impatient in the sense that the attention is always hopping to something else. I like to think that my principle task is to get that person’s attention and not lose it… If you turn your back on that reader and just amuse yourself, when you look back the reader will be reading another book or watching television or gone to the movies or fallen asleep.’ [ The Times Magazine 23/3/96]

Our job as writers is not to amuse ourselves. We must never forget our readers. I learned  a lot of things writing crime fiction (more of that to come) but this was probably the most important of them all.

The price is £2. 83 (I forgot that VAT would be added hence the odd number of pence)  but as I like to say this is less than the price of a coffee in town, wherever your town maybe.

In my last post I said I would tell the story of how the novel came close to mainstream publication- so here it is in brief…

Blood Tide began as a novel about a girl forced to work in the sex trade and who went missing.To begin with I called it ‘Looking For Gina.’

I knew I wanted a young Iraq war veteran  in the story because at the time I was so appalled by the Iraq war and have always been appalled by the damage war does to men. I didn’t know however that there would be an ex prison Governor turned Private Investigator at the novel’s heart. This was a suggestion made to me by my writing buddy Wendy which I quickly took up.

I always knew I wanted to set the story in winter in Newcastle and Weardale.

I wrote the first draft 80,000 words – a chapter a day – in two months in Agde in France.I then worked hard to get it into shape for about a year when I got back.

When I first sent the novel to my agent I got an immediate and positive response – she liked it – she particularly liked the main characters and the dialogue. Things were looking good. It was picked up more or less straight away by an editor in a London publishing house who was keen to commission it. It went to the States to the co-publishers; was read there, and they declared in its favour. It looked like full steam ahead. I supplied the English publishers with photo, biography etc, etc. I foolishly, naively perhaps, thought we were home and dry.

Then suddenly everything went very quiet until finally after some months the editor said she was sorry but she was no longer in a position to commission crime fiction – not until 2012 at least. The story rolled on from there with other thwarted attempts (which I won’t go into) to sell by my agent until we finally agreed that the best way forward was Kindle !

All of this took several years and got to me the point where I began to lose my enthusiasm for writing. I know I’m not alone in this – that there are many other writers out there who’ve had a raw deal. I’m just very grateful to have found an alternative and retrieved my love of writing.

I think of Blood Tide as my ‘prison book.’ It would never have been written if I hadn’t worked at HMP Low Newton for all those years

Here is the DEDICATION and SPECIAL THANKS – as it appears at the front of the novel -

For John – for discovering the city with me.

Special thanks also to all my colleagues and friends in the Prison Service who do such a great job; without them life inside would have been so much harder. In particular, thanks to the lovely Carole for showing me the south side of the river and for the special day of freedom we enjoyed. To Tony – thank you for your friendship and unerring support and for sharing your stories with me.

Finally, thank you to David for the companionship, the honest feedback, and for truly helping to shape Danny Beck. And to Katie, for being there.

This week  I spent a rainy Friday afternoonon in a local hostelry – with first tea and then a glass of chilled white – with  my lovely friends Wendy and Gillian who proceeded to give me just such a ‘kick’  – in the nicest possible way – by talking me round to getting my crime novel Blood Tide onto Kindle and out into the world.

They were right when they told me I’d been procrastinating. I had. I’m not entirely sure why but I think it had something to do with Blood Tide’s history and the disappointment I felt about it not being snapped up by a mainstream publisher – especially as at one point it looked as if that was exactly what was going to happen. It’s a long protracted story, which I’ll elaborate on in my next post. But for now let’s just say it was a tough one for both me and my agent who had also been very hopeful.

My reluctance to publish Blood Tide was also caused by my feeling that it was very different from my previous novel; being in the crime genre. Having spent a weekend with it I know that while it is a genre novel it also very much my novel, exploring the themes that I am drawn to as a writer, among which are: the lives of abused and disenfranchised women, prison and the dark side, loss and the healing power of friendship and love, our deep connection with the past and with the landscape in which we live….

When it comes down to it why can’t a writer write in more than genre? And why can’t I write poetry and crime and romantic fiction and whatever else I choose? The answer is of course that there is no reason at all – it is really only the traditional world of publishing that demands writers get into a certain groove and remain there – better for the market they  say. Well in my new Indie world there are no such restrictions and I expect to have published Blood Tide within the next few days! Wish me luck…