Llangoed Hall - our Welsh weekend

The grand facade of Llangoed Hall

The lovely Morning Room

Wonderful proportions of the staircase -and note the hat-rack!

The metal fire-curtain - a strange coincidence

Mr B and I recently spent a weekend at a beautiful hotel in the Brecon Beacons - Llangoed Hall. The place has a very interesting history and was apparently originally Llangoed Castle, possibly the place of the first Welsh parliament and documented since the year 560. The mansion dated from 1632 and changed possession many times including once in the 1800's as the result of a game of cards - very Georgette Heyer! In 1912 it was rebuilt by Clough Williams-Ellis, of Portmeirion fame, as a great country house. His architectural plans can be seen framed on the walls upstairs. A little of the Jacobean mansion was retained, but overall it feels Edwardian - well-proportioned and spacious.

We've travelled all over the place and stayed in a vast number of different and lovely hotels, but Llangoed Hall felt very special indeed. It has such a chequered history, the most recent bits of which can be read about in a scruffy old scrap book in the Drawing Room. The great house fell to rack and ruin, mostly due to the cost of upkeep and heating, and in the 1970s the owner tried to get permission to demolish it. Luckily that was refused but because of the huge amount of renovation required, a new owner wasn't found for many years and the place became even more delapidated. There were apparently all sorts of shenanigans going on with bids and things, and eventually Sir Bernard Ashley, husband of the famous Laura, bought the ruined place in 1987. He spent millions renovating, rebuilding and turning the place into a luxury hotel with the feel of an Edwardian country house. According to press-cuttings in the scrap book, there were many people who didn't like what he did as some of his alterations were very sweeping. However, as you can see from the photos above, the end result is absolutely stunning. I love old places like this.

Just before our weekend away I'd finished reading "The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters. I really enjoyed the book, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009, beloved by Dovegreyreader the famous book blogger, and was the first book to be featured recently on the replacement for the Richard & Judy book show - Channnel 4's TV Book Club. In fact Sarah Waters had been at Port Eliot LitFest last summer when I was there, but sadly I was too busy doing Stonewylde to be able to listen to her talk.

The Little Stranger is a very disturbing read. It's a long time since I read anything that frightened me so much that I was scared to turn out the light (and not dare go to the loo!). It's a modern Gothic ghost story - modern but actually set just after the Second World War. It's complex and intriguing, working on many different levels which I won't pontificate about here as this is not a book review blog. But apart from enjoying the thrill of a well-written supernatural tale and the craft of an excellent author, I loved the period detail. The post-war period is not one often featured in historical fiction, being far less glamorous than the war years themselves, or the inbetween war years either. Sarah Waters' observations on class and society, and her examination of the decay of a way of life that had vanished by the end of the century made fascinating and compulsive reading.

So when I arrived at Llangoed Hall for our weekend stay, my head was still spinning with ghosts, large country houses and all sorts of period detail. Reading the scrap book about the history of the place really put me in mind of Hundreds Hall, the stately home in The Little Stranger. Both had suffered dreadful decay and neglect, and but for Sir Bernard Ashley, Llangoed may have gone the same way as the doomed fictional mansion. I was delighted, on entering the beautiful Drawing Room, to discover a metal fire-curtain in use. In The Little Stranger, Waters describes a metal fire curtain in detail and although I'd never seen or even heard of such a thing before, I'd been able to picture it clearly. And there was one for real at Llangoed Hall!

Another strange coincidence that weekend happened on the Saturday night. We'd spent a wonderful day out walking in the Brecon Beacons, scrambling into a huge cave mouth, discovering waterfalls and exploring the wild landscape. We'd enjoyed a luxurious bath, dresssed for dinner and eaten a delicious meal. The service in the restaurant was pretty awful - the only negative thing about the hotel - but by changing our booking to an earlier slot we managed to eat at a more reasonable time than the previous night. Unfortunately I'd almost engaged in a punch-up with the man on the table next to us, who was noisily texting during the meal. Poor Mr B has to constantly avert disasters when I get on my high horse! But all was now well, and we were sitting in the Drawing Room near the blazing log fire and its metal curtain that delighted me so, drinking coffee and eating petits-fours.

We got chatting to another couple and had been speaking for about half an hour of this and that, when something jolted in my memory. It turned out that the woman was someone I'd met in Italy, on a holistic holiday, four years ago! We'd only known each other for a week and hadn't seen each other since, but something was said that made both of us suddenly remember each other! It was very strange - and then we spent the next two hours catching up. This really was an unexpected but very welcome twist to our special weekend away, and she and I shall now make sure we keep in touch.

I felt a real reluctance to leave Llangoed Hall, and I'm pretty sure I shall go back there again. There was something quite compelling about the place ... I've since discovered that it's said to be haunted by a boy who committed suicide there in the 1940's. Now I wonder if Sarah Waters has visited the place?

Signing with my literary agent at Centre Point

Lipstick in the black marble bathroom - reminiscent of Magus' room!

View from Centre Point across London - including the London Eye

Kit signing up with Piers Russell-Cobb

Piers anticipates success with Stonewylde!

Last night I spent an exciting evening which may just change my life! After three months of discussion and negotiation, I zoomed up the dizzying height of Centre Point in Tottenham Court Road, London in a swishy lift to sign an author-agent agreement with Piers Russell-Cobb of The MediaFund Ltd.

There was some other big event going on at the Paramount Club, which occupies the top three floors of this sky-scraper landmark building, and downstairs the security men were turning away journalists and paps alike. "Surely," I thought, "they haven't come to photograph me signing up with my new literary agent?" No, they hadn't. It was an interview and photoshoot with someone called Kate (Moss? Winslett? Price? - I didn't actually get to see her as this was on a different floor) and we were left alone to sign the contract.

It could have all turned nasty, as in the glamorous darkness of the Paramount Club's facilities(and not wearing my glasses at this point) I was just applying more lipstick when Mr B barged into the loos.

"You can't come in here!" I spluttered indignantly. Is there no sanctuary from my husband's attentions? But it turned out I was in the Gents' - whoops!!

Anyway, after my faux-pas we sat in the very glitzy lounge drinking a crisp Sauvignon Blanc with the most amazing backdrop behind us - London spread out like jewels - and Piers outlined again his exciting vision for Stonewylde. He really is a darling, and I'd sign up with him for his perfect vowels alone. I remember his first phone-call, when he'd started reading Magus of Stonewylde and realised that he'd found his next big project. He was so excited! What I really like about Piers is that he completely "gets" Stonewylde. He's an experienced business man, having worked in the publishing and film industries for many years after Oxford, and most recently attached to the Marsh Agency as well as running his own company. In Piers' mind there is no doubt about Stonewylde's success. He understands it's different, hard to categorise, outside the box. But that's the sort of man he is too, and with his extensive range of contacts in the world of books and films, he's confident of securing a good deal for me which will enable Stonewylde to finally hit the big time.

I'm an upbeat sort of person but I'm also a realist, and would never make the mistake of counting chickens too early. I've always had faith in Stonewylde and its appeal - several thousand readers can't be wrong! But likewise I will believe it all when I see it, and in the meantime I'd like to thank again all those who've been behind me from my early days as a complete unknown, a Dorset school-teacher who had the dream of becoming a writer. I've had the most amazing, uplifting support and loyalty from my readers, many of whom have spent their time and money helping to spread the word, following me about on my travels, writing me e-mails of encouragement, keeping my networking site active and welcoming ... the list just goes on and on. I can't imagine there are many authors who enjoy such incredible support and I'll never forget it.

Let's hope that last night's signing with Piers Russell-Cobb brings Stonewylde into the mainstream and perhaps even onto the big screen, and most of all that I'll now be able to concentrate on writing. That's what I'm longing for most - there's a lot more to come from the pen (or laptop) of Kit Berry!

Imbolc - a Celtic festival of awakening

Daffodil with a snow hood - courtesy of Mary of Mullion

The Stonewylde image for Imbolc - the Maiden Huntress
Copyright Helixtree


Brigid's Cross in the snowdrops
Courtesy of Cornmother

Today is Imbolc, a Celtic cross-quarter festival later subsumed by the Christian Church into Candlemas, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary. It is the time of the Maiden, the awakening of the Earth in her rebirth after the darkness of winter. The ancient symbols for this festival, so important in an agricultural society where farming was survival (as it still is today, although we seem to forget that) are many. White candles, a girl dressed in white, young goddesses such as Bride, also known as Brigid, Brighid and later St Bridget, the maiden huntress with her bow of the waxing crescent moon, a besom (old fashioned broom) for sweeping out the debris of winter and heralding the start of the growing season ... this is a time of new beginnings, a chance to declutter and start afresh.

This is also the time when the ploughing would begin, and the corndollies woven at Lammas, containing the Corn Spirit, would be ploughed back into the cold earth. Thus would the spirit be returned to the land to work her magic yet again. There are clear parallels here with Greek mythology - Demeter and Persephone - and the idea of why life returns after the barreness of winter. The St Brigid's Cross is a symbol of Imbolc too, and the festival is featured in the fourth book of the Stonewylde series, Shadows at Stonewylde. However as this book is still in manuscript form, I'm afraid you'll have to wait to read that!

I woke this morning to find the land sparkling with a light dusting of snow in the brilliant sunshine. Some years, Imbolc is dreary and grey, but today felt wonderful as if the Earth is stretching and yawning from her slumber. This is certainly a time of new beginnings for me. On Wednesday (two days' time) I shall be travelling to Mayfair in London to sign with a major literary agency. This has been a difficult decision to make, as up until now Stonewylde has been my own baby, nurtured and raised by me alone (well, Mr B too of course) and to hand it over to strangers will be hard. I've spent the last four and a half years since I published Magus of Stonewylde promoting the books endlessly, fighting to get them into shops, trying every means I could think of to get publicity and recognition. It's been a challenge, and finally I feel the time has come to hand this over to someone bigger.

Self-publishing is almost a dirty word in the publishing world. Authors, agents, reviewers and publishing houses seem to mock anyone who's done it alone, the received wisdom being that if the book was any good, it would have been published by a reputable company. If the author has had to pay to print it themselves, it must be rubbish. I can't say I've read many self-published books, but apparently a lot of them are rubbish because they've lacked professional editing. And perhaps too because the author should have stuck to their day job!

However Stonewylde was professionally edited. Thanks again to Clare Pearson, who painstakingly went through the first three books sentence by sentence and battled with me over every disputed comma and cliche! I didn't give up my day job of teaching for a long time, and it wasn't until the e-mails and letters started pouring in from unknown readers and the books began to sell in significant quantities that I finally believed that maybe I could write, and maybe the series would be a success. Stonewylde is not everyone's cup of tea of course, and it's not clever literary fiction. As I've said before, I really imagined it was for the young adult market, given the ages of Yul and Sylvie, and it's been a complete revelation to discover that the majority of Stonewylde's readership is adult, and as many men as women.

What has finally prompted me to sell the rights to Stonewylde is the fact that promoting the books is a full time job in itself and I can no longer cope. Last year I travelled all over the country and twice to the Netherlands, and I spend a huge amount of time on PR and marketing. I realised in the autumn that I simply couldn't do this and continue to write as well. If I wanted to write more (and I desperately do - not just Stonewylde but other things too that are growing inside me and starting to become insistent that they see the light of day) then I would have to hand Stonewylde over to a publisher.

However, in today's publishing world it's almost impossible for an author of fiction to be accepted by a publisher without a literary agent. And of course I'm up against a tricky thing here - Stonewylde has already been published and has sold many thousands of copies of each book. There are precedents for publishers taking on previously self-published material, but not many. And not for a series of three books either. Publishers need to be convinced that there is a huge market for Stonewylde. People who haven't actually read Stonewylde often dismiss the series as a niche genre - appealing to lovers of fantasy, or whacky pagans, or only teenage girls. Anyone who's read the books knows that this simply isn't true. The books seem to have a very wide and strange appeal, striking a chord in the most unlikely heart.

But in line with my own whackiness and belief in a power greater than mine, I posted copies of Magus of Stonewylde to several literary agents as the Owl Moon was rising. This is the full moon of November for those who haven't yet familiarised themselves with the landscape of Stonewylde. It's very difficult to be taken on by a literary agent - they're inundated with manuscripts from wannabe authors and we're also in a recession at the moment. They receive literally thousands of manuscripts each year, and most will only take on a small handful or less of new authors. But within a week I'd heard back from two very well-known agencies, both excited by Stonewylde and keen to represent me. I can't tell you how delighted I was!

By the next full moon, the Frost Moon of December, I'd met them both and entered discussions. I spent that moon on the Darkness and Transformation course at Scumacher (see earlier blog from December) and sat under an ancient yew tree with the full moon glowing through the branches, thinking of what each literary agent had to offer and which I should choose. I felt so lucky to even have a choice.

Now, as Imbolc is upon us, I'm about to sign with the agent I've chosen. This truly is a time of new beginnings for me, and hopefully before many more full moons have risen, my new agent will have sold some of the rights up for grabs. Given that Stonewylde has a huge following, with over a thousand people subscribed to my newsletter and more than five hundred members on my forum, not to mention the thousands of other readers who have enjoyed the books and are quietly waiting for the fourth one to be published, I have a real duty not to sell out. My agent and I will work closely to secure the best deals for Stonewylde, and if I'm not completely happy with what's on offer I shall simply continue to self-publish. The last thing I would do is betray my loyal readers with a bad deal that results in Shadows at Stonewylde remaining in the darkness for much longer.

Bright blessings for Imbolc! If you haven't yet seen my latest newsletter, sent out just after the Wolf Moon of January and containing full details of all events booked for this year, please follow this link. I'll keep you all posted of events, and please think of me on Wednesday morning as I sign the contract.