What a pleasure to spend an evening with ‘my readers’! That sounds very grand, a hall full of people rather than the five lovely women who were part of this club. But for me it was as good. To see my book in their hands, to be told that they’d connected with the characters, found […]
A Retrospective was my first novel published in 2013. Prior to this moment it had been the cause of elation when it was picked up by an agent. Sadly, it failed to be taken up by any of the publishers to whom it was then sent. Hence it’s publication on Amazon, thanks to Drew Westcott […]
As you will know from previous blogs, I find it helpful, and often necessary, to go to a cafe which serves coffee. The terminology of recent is ‘a coffee shop’. The emphasis, of course, on coffee in its many varied forms rather than the other non alcoholic beverages they serve. I go for the boost […]
Recently I was asked which was my favourite of the books I’ve published. I know that the piece I’m writing at the time is always going to be the best I’ve ever written which is as it should be, always striving to do better. It’s exactly what I heard Ian Rankin say in an interview a few years back.
If I’m asked, ‘Do you suffer from writer’s block?’, which implies it’s legendary, I always want to deny that I do, the admission making it a real thing, an inevitability. The word ‘block’ is the one to avoid. It sounds large, hard and permanent, whereas it’s often temporary, a flimsy curtain. I admit that not […]
Is any post better than none? Yes, I triumphantly tell myself having a glass of wine at my side this evening. I wish to record that after three days of intermittently trying to take an agapanthus out of a pot in which its roots had swollen to such a degree that it was about to […]
Choosing a title for a book is sometimes easy, usually hard. So much has to be conveyed in few words. The plot and whole tone of what you’ve written relies on the title. And although I’m speaking here of fiction, the same must apply to factual books. A title has to grab a reader’s attention […]
Here I am, another year begun, and again contemplating what inspires me, to get up in the morning, to get on with chores, especially to write. Do I have to be in a ‘good’ mood, no longer under dawn’s cloud of depression? That’s usually fixed with a cup of coffee, especially if taken in a […]
New as she was to the town, we should have felt sorry for her. All alone, never visitors welcomed to her door. Of course, that didn’t surprise us seeing the look of her, shabby was a polite way of putting it. Her house a tip too, books piled, pictures propped, and she’d painted the walls all colours, positively garish, the place smelling of turps.
I got a glimpse when I went to advise on tidying her garden; ‘unkempt’, I said, and that was being civil. Snapped my head off, she did, said it was none of my business what she grew on her own patch. Slut! None of us bothered after that.
Which is why it’s been a bit of a shock.
Christmas Eve, a man dressed in a red hooded coat, trousers to match and big black boots at her door. Not young as he’d a white beard, but tall with a sort of presence. Right there, for all to see, he threw his arms around her like they’d really got something going. And quick as that, she took him in.
What’s really upset us is the sleigh still parked on her front drive. And nine fat reindeer grazing the grass verge.
I can’t believe he went along with it. A balmy night at the end of October, moonless, no whispering leaves in the trees, lamplight pooled on the pavement. He said to meet in the graveyard at the back of the church. Not that it’s a spooky place being right in the middle of town. Macdonalds up one way, Indian takeaways down the other and kebab shop in between. There weren’t crowds around but enough people to give the whole event a bit of pizzazz. Or more importantly that what I said would be corroborated. Or so I thought.
I hadn’t got a proper costume; witches with broomsticks so outmoded and skeletons done to death, no pun intended. But the fishnet tights, scarlet dress like a second skin, black eyes and lipstick gashed mouth looked sinister enough.
He’d gone for the works, of course, slashed jeans, rubber mask, cobweb strings covering his hair, chains and padlocks wound round every limb. The sound effect was good but … well, it was him that said; ‘Trick or treat?’ and me that shrugged; ‘You do the trick and I’ll give you a treat!’
The church steeple wasn’t that tall, and he’d boasted about climbing when doing his D of E. But the fire brigade weren’t taking any of that on board when they found him hanging from the weather vane atop the spire, all that paraphernalia dragging him down and snarling him up. Blubbing like a baby.
Not my fault, I said. But like Eve, Cassandra and all the other women over time, I was labelled the brazen hussy goading another poor bloke to feats beyond endurance.
