Can fiction portray fact without sounding as if the research undertaken is being shoehorned in, and is, therefore, a distraction from the storyline? I’ve never wished to read factual books about war; strategies, weaponry,  battles, how they were won or lost.  Partly I fear the danger of glorifying war even though I know that those who […]

When it was first suggested that I might want to create a website, I couldn’t think what for. Advertise my books?  But then how would anyone know that I had a website, or be interested. The constant nag, very often into a woman’s mind, which says; ‘isn’t this a bit above your station’? An exaggeration […]

Serendipity is one of my favourite words, the sound as well as the meaning; ‘occurence of events by chance in a beneficial way’.  The element of surprise is wholly satisfactory.  Fate, fortune and happenstance take us into the realm of risk; the chance might be good or bad.  As planning and plotting in real life never […]

Winter dark, a new year, and avidly I watch the times of the rising and setting sun as if unsure that it will happen again, that the year will turn. The only solace the sight of the first aconites and snowdrops which are greeted with such excitement, as if I’d never seen them before. The […]

Christmas tugs at all the memories of the past, those rituals and traditions we set up as a family that we separately and together remember, what was special and what we must carry on into the future. Our family were more separated than usual this year, so it seemed particularly important that at the same time […]

Shopping lists, the medium for watercolour painting, books, toilet paper, wrapping paper, shopping bags, tickets for theatre in all its variety, train tickets, bus tickets, hard copies, wills, envelopes, newspapers, magazines; the uses are endless. Uses that are impossible to translate into other forms, or if they are, less comfortable or comforting. This is a […]

There are toadstools popping up everywhere, spiders assuming ownership of every part of the garden, webs binding innocent passersby; and it’s the time for pruning, lifting and splitting, a month of putting it all to rest. And I have a short story which is spinning in my head, needing to be trapped, pruned, lifted and […]

I read and hear on the news that the Booker shortlist announced today is ‘grimmer’ with choices which explore or relate ‘harrowing passages’, ‘a tremendous amount of violence’ with themes of abuse, brutality and the futility of life. As someone who might well be put off reading this ‘extraordinary range of approaches to fiction’, I […]

I’ve just read a fascinating article by Ceriden Dovey. The author writes of having been given a series of sessions with a bibliotherapist as a gift. Being offered specific texts to read on ‘prescription’ did not appeal to her at first but she settled in to find intrigue and satisfaction in this method. The article made […]