Mary Hoffman and serendipity

Stonewylde book 5 is coming on really well now. But my editor at Orion has been asking that dreaded question, 'Do you have a title yet? And what ideas do you have for the cover?' Yikes! I knew this would happen and I haven't yet decided on the title, although there are two main contenders at the moment. And that will dictate the cover art of course. I've set myself a deadline of Sunday night to decide.

In the meantime, I was struck this week yet again by the way that strange and weird things happen in life - call it serendipity, fate, coincidence or whatever. I think we all know that moment when the hair on our arms rises and we have evidence that there is some kind of pattern to life. This week, the parents of a very good friend of mine visited me for lunch. They wanted to see the new house and bring some things over.

Anyone who's read the re-published versions of Stonewylde will see that the series is now also dedicated to my friend, Debbie. She was my best friend from when we were thirteen year-olds at school together. She remained my closest and dearest friend over the years, even though we've both spent time living abroad and our lives were very different. She always expected me to be a writer one day, remembering my scribbles, dreams and imagination from younger days, and was one of the first to read the draft manuscript to my original books. She died in 2009 of cancer, aged 50. Her parents and I (who've also known each other since I was 13) remain close and now the initial shock and pain of bereavement has eased, we enjoy reminiscing about Debbie and the past.

They've finally sorted through all Debbie's things and have given me lots of her bits and pieces - always lovely, but it does bring back the pain. There are also a life-time of birthday and Christmas presents and little random gifts that I gave her and which they want me to have. Debbie was very sentimental - she kept everything I ever gave her. Her parents have gradually worked their way through it all and every time we see each other they give me another box or bag of stuff, including clothes and shoes. It may seem a bit macabre, but I get a lot of pleasure out of wearing Debbie's old things and I know she'd have approved. She always said she had better taste than me! When they visited on Tuesday they brought what they believe is the last box of things, and it contained various books I'd given Debbie over the years. I'd already had loads of books returned, so this was a surprise. And when I saw two of them I had that hair-raising moment.

Way back in the 90s I bought two books which really changed things for me at a time when I was "finding my path". One was called 'Sun, Moon and Stars' and the other 'Song of the Earth'. They were beautiful books - exquisitely illustrated and with wonderful text. They were children's books, but I've always loved children's books. These two books, which I spent so many hours browsing through, focus on mythology and legends about the world and the universe. They're so well researched and reshaped my feelings about nature and deity. There's one double-paged spread in 'Song of the Earth' called 'Mother Earth', with a picture of a sleeping woman - a goddess in the landscape. This is how I picture Stonewylde, and I know that these two books significantly contributed to my ideas for Stonewylde when the whole concept was still embryonic.

Debbie had such unwavering faith in the ultimate success of Stonewylde and always encouraged me, even when it all looked impossible. So a few years later, I bought her copies of both these beautiful books to thank her for all the support and encouragement she'd given me. I felt tearful when I looked in the box and saw that her parents had found them and returned them to me.

And then I went cold - firstly they're published by Orion which I hadn't appreciated, not having looked at my copies for years, and certainly not since signing my publishing deal with Orion. And then I saw ... they're written by Mary Hoffman! And only last week I put a link to that same lady's blog about the Fisherman's Wife!! Of course when I did that I hadn't realised that she's the author of these two favourite and much-loved books. What a strange world it is - her name leapt out at me and I couldn't believe the coincidence.

Mary, if you read this - thank you for all the pleasure these books gave to me, Debbie and also the many children I taught, who also loved them. Thank you for the inspiration I gained from them too. And are you going to the big Orion authors' party in February? It would be wonderful to meet you!

Monday is washing day

Photo courtesy of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Does anyone remember that funny old song about Monday being washing day? It went through the whole week, ending in "Is everybody happy? You bet your life we are!" I thought of this as I bundled a load of whites into the washing machine this morning, prior to beginning Chapter 4. A king-size sheet, two pillow cases, a bath sheet and one of Mr B's white shirts - all were stuffed in the aperture, the washing liquid and fabric conditioner sloshed into the correct holes, the buttons pressed and hey presto - washing done. And the toaster hadn't even popped in the space of time it took me to do this. One hour and twenty-five minutes later it's done and ready to be put out to dry.

I never take my washing machine for granted, remembering only too well what it's like not to have one. Washing machines are one of the wonderful inventions that liberated women from some of the household drudgery. Without one it takes hours and hours a week to keep a family in clean clothes and bed-linen. I was aware of this when writing my books. At Stonewylde there's a Laundry House in the Village and of course the Hall has its own laundry. This is where Rowan worked and where Magus first approached her to ask if she'd do him the honour of being his May Queen at Beltane. You can imagine how time-consuming it must be for Villagers to do their laundry and how much more effort it takes to keep everything clean. But at Stonewylde the emphasis has never been on doing things quickly. When you think how long it takes to actually produce a shirt, for instance - grow and harvest the flax, spin and dye the fibre, weave the cloth, cut and sew the garment - the washing of it would also be done mindfully and carefully.

Two of my sons are about to move into a new house-share and have found somewhere lovely. Their new place of course includes a washing machine, and this made me wonder how many people in western society today don't have access to a washing machine, or failing that, a launderette? They're good around the house, but I don't think my sons would have a clue how to wash clothes by hand. I remember when they were born I washed everything by hand. It took a large chunk of my morning, every single morning, to wash the family's clothes and worst of all, the nappies! I boiled those in a big pan, having soaked them overnight in a bucket. All the washing was wrung out by hand, which was a difficult job, especially for the big things like sheets. I used to long for a mangle like the one I remember my grandmother using. Then the dripping items would be hung out on the line, and in the winter it really was a nightmare getting everything dry. I bet older readers will have similar memories.

As finances improved, we bought a second hand spin-drier - that was a dream come true even though it skidded across the floor if you didn't hold on tight. Then we stretched to an ancient twin-tub - it leaked horribly and still took ages, but it seemed like luxury! And finally we managed to get an automatic washing machine. Sadly by then the nappies had more or less finished, but the bliss of being able to put the washing on and then get on with something else - I shall never take that for granted. So this morning, after I'd put the washing on and then sat with my toast and coffee, I thought of the women of Stonewylde and their Laundry House.

As a post-script, I'd like to thank the Schools Liaison unit in Birmingham for their kind permission to use the photo above. I'm never quite sure about copyright for pictures on blogs - so many are beautifully illustrated but there's often no credit to anyone, and I wonder how that works with copyright? I'd be really interested to hear from other bloggers about this. Do you bother asking permission? I spent about ten minutes on the phone getting permission to use the photo above, and in some blogs I read there are loads of different pictures - it would take for ever to ask everyone concerned. Of course normally I try to use my own pictures but that's not always possible. I'd welcome any advice on this from anyone who knows.

Right - back to Chapter 4 then. The writing has started to flow, the threads have been picked up again (so tricky by the fifth book as there are so many of them) and it's all happening in my head. Phew! Have a good week, Stonewylders!

The Fisherman's Wife - by Mary Hoffman

I do hope I'm not breaching any blogging etiquette here, and I'm also doing something that I vowed never to do - just provide a link to another interesting blog because I don't have time to create one myself today! I hope Mary Hoffman doesn't mind, and I hope you all don't either. It won't happen very often I promise, but this blog of hers seemed so timely in view of some of my blogs moaning about things not happening fast enough for me. I'm now sitting here feeling a bit guilty and know I'm very much in danger of becoming fisherman's wifely in my aspirations at times. But like Mary says, not for fortune so much as fame. And by that, I mean wanting people to read and love your creations, not ghastly celeb type fame.

Anyway, here's the link to this excellent blog, and I hope you enjoy it. Have a lovely weekend, Stonewylders! I'm about to start Chapter 3 now - whoo hoo!

http://steelthistles.blogspot.com/2012/01/fisherman-and-his-wife.html

Thanks to Mary Hoffman for her wonderful blog, and to Katherine Langrish, whose blogsite this is posted on.

Stonewylde - article for deletion in Wikipedia

This photo isn't particularly relevant to my blog today other than it's the view of sunset from my writing room window. I call this special room 'A Room of One's Own' and Mr B gets confused and calls it 'A Room with a View'. So here is the view.

I went out today (briefly) - the first time I've driven my car in almost two weeks. I'm still a bit wobbly but finally, this virus has released me from its grip. I've started writing again, having tried and failed miserably whilst I was feeling ill, and am so happy to be getting on with the fifth book properly. I've almost finished the second chapter, which I know seems like appalling progress, but in fact it's the hardest bit, the beginning. There'll be no stopping me now!

In the meantime, in view of some of the lovely coments on my last rather disconsolate post, I thought I should say a little bit about what's been happening on Wikipedia recently. We were first alerted to the shenanigans by our own dear Cornmother. For any reader of this blog who doesn't belong to our online community, Cornmother is one of our original and most loyal and staunch supporters, and is also an incredibly efficient researcher and gatherer of information. She warned us recently that Stonewylde was about to be deleted on Wikipedia.

It seems that they'd already deleted the entries for each of the Stonewylde books, and also the entry about me as an author. Now under the hammer (or is that axe?) was the article about Stonewylde. This article describes(d) the whole place - not the books, but the place and the community itself. It spoke of things like the Meadery and the Stone Circle, the Great Barn and the celebration of the festivals. The article was all about the world of Stonewylde. Apparently it's up for deletion not because it describes a fictional place (examples cited in the debate were Narnia, Gormenghast and Hogwarts) but because it isn't notable. This is wiki-speak for it doesn't have lots of references - or rather, it hasn't been referenced by many other articles. In other words it's not actually important enough to warrant an entry.

There were some very disparaging and dismissive remarks about the fact that the books were self-published (sadly this had not been updated) and as all information about me led back to my website, I was not considered notable in my own right. There was quite a lot of discussion from various sources about this. The fact that I'd been featured by the Dorset Evening Echo four times (and one of these was a huge double paged spread) wasn't considered enough to make me or Stonewylde notable. The fact that the first book was reviewed in the Financial Times, and there have been articles about me in many magazines and also The Times (T2) and the Telegraph, not to mention other local papers such as the Western Morning News - none of this counted for anything. Nor did the fact that the series had been picked up by Orion Books and republished, generating articles in The Bookseller and Writers' News.

The whole thing has made me wonder - at what point does something become big enough or important enough to warrant an entry in Wikipedia? I think the latest news is that they're reinstating an article about me as an author. I haven't actually looked today to see if Stonewylde has been deleted yet. I tried yesterday but of course it was blackout day. It isn't the end of the world and I'm sure if Stonewylde grows further, it'll warrant its own entry in Wikipedia. Not that the inhabitants of Stonewylde would approve of course - it is a secret community after all!

If you build it, they will come

Apparently (according to Wiki - and more about them tomorrow) this is a misquote, but we're all familiar with the concept from the film 'Field of Dreams' of just doing it, however daft and impossible it seems, and having faith that it'll all work out. In the film it was about building a baseball pitch in the middle of nowhere. In my blog post today it's about putting up a niger seed feeder in the garden. In my life, it's about writing Stonewylde.

At this new house we'd inherited a quadruple bird feeding station complete with squirrel baffle. We'd made friends with the lovely couple who'd lived here for thirty years and were now looking to downsize as the house, and particularly the garden, were just too big for them to cope with. Leaving here was such a wrench for them, and one of the lady's worries was about the birds. I promised her I'd continue to feed them and keep the bird bath full, and in fact I added my own bird feeder too. In the three months we've been here we've had so much pleasure watching the garden and the amazing wildlife; the deer was practically at the back door today but I had no camera handy.

A good friend of mine from Dorset said I must add niger seed for finches to the bird-feeding station. I looked it up and the advice was only to invest in a special niger feeder if there were finches around. I'd never seen any here and when I e-mailed the previous owners, they said no, don't bother with a niger feeder as they'd tried it but no finches had graced the garden. But my Dorset friend was insistent - if you supply niger seed, eventually finches will come. So I did - and the photo above proves how right she was. I've seen a pair of goldfinches feeding together (again no camera handy) and I'm hoping this will continue now they've found our garden. It's not been a very hard winter yet and there's probably still plenty of seed around in the nearby fallow fields. But at least they know we're here!

And it feels like this with Stonewylde. It took a huge leap of faith originally to borrow the money from my step-father and self-publish the first book after all those rejections from publishers. Nothing happened for ages and then slowly but surely, people started to read the book. It was another leap of faith giving up my teaching career and re-mortgaging my house in order to publish the next two books and devote myself full-time to promoting and continuing with the series. After selling many thousands of copies of the first three books we then took another leap of faith. We decided to sell the rights to a major publisher who were very excited about the prospects of re-launching Stonewylde.

I'm not quite sure what we expected but now, as I'm writing the final Stonewylde book, I can't help but feel a bit like Ray in the Field of Dreams when he starts to doubt that inner voice. Was it all just an impossible dream? Will the series ever be a real, best-selling success? Will Stonewylde, and the whole concept it represents, ever become a household name? The doubts nag at me as I face the enormous task of writing book five and trying to keep up with all the other online stuff I must do to maintain my presence as an author. But I know I must cast all doubts aside and 'stiffen the sinews'. I must remember that the goldfinch came. And I must remember that life-changing inner voice experience from Oct 31st 2003.

"You will write - and it will be a huge success."

Giving a novel shape

I'm back - I couldn't write a post yesterday as this damn virus still has me in its coils. I think I'm on the mend, get up and start trying to behave in a normal fashion and WHAM! I feel awful and have to take to my bed again. Such was yesterday, and today too. The sun is shining outside and it's beautiful - I long to be walking in the woods and fields and feeling right, but instead I'm stuck in bed feeling dizzy and weird. You know when you get the dreaded spinny-thing on your computer? That's what my head feels like at the moment - permanently in spinny-thing mode. Not responding.

Anyway, enough moaning. Thanks for the comments again. Martyn - that's an interesting proposition. Unlikely that enough people would be interested in my planning notes to make them worth publishing, but perhaps one day I could give a talk to any interested Stonewylders. And yes, Simone - I certainly think it's really important to do plenty of research and get your facts right. If people are going to suspend disbelief and invest their time reading your novel, the least you can do as a writer is try your very best to make everything as accurate as possible. And even then you make mistakes sometimes! The second picture above shows a few of my reference books on folklore, traditions and superstitions. I do try to get things as accurate as I can, and if I invent something at Stonewylde, I try to ensure it's feasible within existing customs. And Laoi - I do hope this blogging about how I'm creating the book doesn't spoil the magic for you! Please remember that Stonewylde is actually real.

The first picture above is of Robert McKee (courtesy of his website), the guy who put me straight about the principles of planning a novel. I found he'd written a book called 'Story' all about structuring a screenplay, but which was also applicable to any story-writing - stage, book or screen. I'd really recommend this book to anyone setting out to write; I learned so much from it. He makes reference to other works I've read in the past: Aristotle's 'Poetics' and Joseph Campbell's 'Hero with a Thousand Faces' for example, both of which are well worth a close read.

When the hefty book arrived, I devoured it. Suddenly all the things I'd sort of half-worked out fell into place, along with many other things that had never occurred to me. When you're writing a story, it's so easy to become totally immersed in the plot and characters - you forget about the actual structure and how it all works behind the scenes. I won't try to precis Robert McKee's work here because I'd never do it justice and it's far to complex for that. But his insights into Inciting Incidents, the Law of Conflict, Crisis, Climax and Resolution, how to deal with exposition - all were fascinating and so very helpful. After reading the book, I also attended one of his four day Story Seminars which he holds all over the world; luckily one came to London at the right time.

It was expensive but incredibly intense and professional. It more or less followed the contents of the book, but hearing the theories expounded by Robert McKee himself really brought them home. I came back determined to apply everything I'd learned, and promptly re-edited the first three Stonewylde books and practically rewrote the existing draft of the fourth book. And now I'm starting from scratch with the fifth book and it's great having a little more knowledge about structure this time around. I realise I probably should have re-read Story before starting on book 5, but much of it has stuck in my head I hope.

So now it's back to the second chapter for me - into the Stone Circle and the celebration going on there. I was on a little bit of a roll last night and need to see if what I wrote in the small hours was any good. I'm disappointed that I've achieved so little this week, but hopefully next week will be better. I hope you all have a good weekend!

Plotting a novel - five act structure

Sorry for the even blurrier photo today but this one really would contain spoilers. It's the page where I've outlined the five acts of the book and also detailed the inciting incident and resolution in each. And once again you can see Magus peacefully curled up in a very useful supporting role of keeping me company whilst I plot and plan.

When I first wrote the original drafts of Stonewylde back in 2003 (I started on November 9th, just after my return from an inspirational course and experience at the Schumacher College in Devon) I had no plan whatsoever. I only had a few vague ideas about a magical, secret community into which a very special girl was brought and then exploited. In the very early stages, Yul - who's ended up as one of the very main characters - didn't even exist! But he very quickly made his presence felt, as all Stonewylde readers will know.

Because of the nature of the books, I soon found that I needed to plan the dates carefully. There's a framework to the story of the eight pagan festivals of the year and this is a type of skeleton on which the whole story hangs. Without planning it to be so, I found that most of the major events seemed to pivot around the festivals. But there were also, of course, the full moons to be factored in. And then the dark moons too. I realised that I had to plan this carefully as I couldn't have a full moon falling only two weeks after the last one! So I drew up a calendar and mapped the eight festivals (with their fixed dates) and around this I wove the lunar calendar. If the festivals are the skeleton, I guess the moons could be the nervous system.

This gave me a good framework to base the whole story upon and served me well for the first three books. I used the same format (festivals then moons juxtaposed onto the calendar) for the fourth book. But by the fourth book it was all becoming a bit complicated. Stonewylde never started out as a series - it was only going to be one book. It was my original literary agent, Clare Pearson, who suggested I turn the huge, unwieldy manuscript into three books. And it was my eldest son George who persuaded me to continue the story into the fourth book. So by this point, the canvas had become enormous. There were so many characters and so many sub-plots going on and the whole thing was pretty daunting.

It was after I'd signed the deal with Orion Books and I was working on rewriting the manuscript for the fourth book that I really wished I had some proper formal training in writing. The story was okay, I thought, but it was woolly and really lacked structure. I found it very hard to tighten it up and to be honest, didn't have a clue where to start. I know there are Creative Writing courses - from casual evening classes to full blown Masters degrees. But I didn't have time for that, so I ended up doing what I usually do in such cases - I bought a book about it!

Tomorrow I shall tell you about Robert McKee and how he changed everything for me. What a break-through! But now I need to get back to writing. The good news is that I've stopped fiddling about with my plans and have started actually writing the book (the equivalent of just jumping into the pool despite the shivering). I've nearly finished the first chapter! Ironically this didn't happen in my beautiful purple writing room but in bed, in my lovely pink bedroom! And no, I'm not Barbara Cartland. I'm much better today (again, thanks for all the well wishing) and will be writing in the proper room today. I'm in there now and would you believe it, a huge fox has just trotted across the lawn in brilliant sunshine, had a quick poo, and now loped away into the trees at the end. Blooming cheek!

Planning the fifth Stonewylde book (with help from Magus)

Now before anyone says anything, yes I know that two of these images are blurred! They're meant to be - I can't give away any secrets, can I? I used the "soft focus" tool on Picasa and I'm hoping that nobody will be able to actually read any of the planning notes.

Thank you so much for all the good wishes to get better, both on here, the forum, Twitter, and FB. That's so kind and I feel a bit fraudulent. I just have a silly virus thing that's making my head hurt and causing me to fall asleep a lot (sounds like the effects of alcohol but it's not!) and sneeze violently every few minutes. Today I feel a great deal better and thank you everyone. As a consequence of the virus thing, I spent yesterday in bed and resisted doing any of the other stuff such as hoovering the house, going to the shops, going for a walk, my keep fit class in the evening etc etc. Which is good news for writing the book of course, though not for my New Year's Resolutions about losing weight and keeping our new house clean. Maybe I should just stay in bed until the end of March and write?

Yesterday, despite falling asleep at regular intervals, I achieved quite a lot and *whispers* I actually started writing book 5! I've been doing the planning so far, and that's just so complicated. During the rest of this week I'll be blogging about how I'm planning. I told you about the A2 sketchpad with its 50 sheets of cartridge paper - I've used about 10 of them so far. The pics are of two of my planning pages and it occurred to me last night that they look horribly like some of my planning for teaching! Once a teacher, always a teacher I guess.

I'll explain tomorrow - and I hope you like the photo of Magus too! He's a beautiful cat but really not very photogenic. He always comes out as just a big dark blob as he's pure black. He's a Burmese type - of the Bombay variety which aren't very common apparently. He has on occasions been mistaken for an ordinary black moggie but don't tell him that. His eyes are a very deep amber and he's gorgeous. He loves me being ill so he has the perfect excuse to stay on my bed all day. He ended up with green glitter sparkling his fur where it rubbed off the cover of my sketchpad and looked even more beautiful.

I'm off to continue Chapter 1 now. I've written the prologue and the opening pages - doesn't sound much but really, this is the very hardest part. It's all plain sailing from now on (ha ha ha). It was strange last night writing about the Dark Moon when in fact it was the Wolf Moon in reality - not that I saw anything as it was so cloudy, but I could feel it and the sky was a strange colour. Leveret is calling me impatiently so I'm going. Thanks again for the well wishes and I'm glad you enjoyed the wildlife in my garden too. I'm looking out for red patches on the woodpeckers' heads now!

Muntjacks and woodpeckers

These are some of the sights from my writing room window. The Muntjack is a persistent visitor and this clearly shows him rootling around trying to find my emerging snowdrops! Actually there are two Muntjacks who visit and we'll have to do something about the fence (or lack of it) at the end of the garden where they get in, adorable though they are.

The Great Spotted Woodpecker is also a constant visitor and has fights with the starlings over the fat balls. Often he (or she?) visits with a partner - they never ever feed together even though there's plenty of room and a choice of three different types of fat on this bird-feeder. One always sits up in the tree above watching whilst the other feeds - they take it in turns, often four or five turns each. The starlings have no such manners - they all pile in together and make a huge racket about it. I do think of the starlings as the chavs of the bird world - and they see my birdfeeder as their local MacDonalds. They also have noisy and very wet disputes in the bird bath.

The squirrel is one of many that frequent our garden. I leave out bread/cake/nuts or whatever (stale mincepies today) every day on a table and I've seen five at once visit this to snatch a morsel. But even so, the un-baffled birdfeeder is a constant temptation and here's one of the little rascals doing his acrobatics to pinch the seed from the poor blue-tits, coal tits and robins. Even if I go outside to shoo them away, some of the more bold squirrels will hold their ground till the very last minute. Our other birdfeeder is protected by a baffle and this works perfectly - no squirrel ever attempts a maraud on this one. The baffle is just a disc of metal placed under the hanging feeders so squirrels can't shin up the pole, as they do on the unprotected one. Mr B and I are going to try and make our own baffle and see what works.

I'm in bed today with a silly virus thing that completely scuppered all my plans for yesterday and today. But the birds are singing their hearts out in the sunshine outside, and the cats are determined to keep me warm (I'm too hot as it is!) so I'll just have to sit here in bed and try to work and doze off when I must. At least I finished reading Shadows yesterday so I can now start writing properly. How many days to go now?

A Room of One's Own - part 4

This is my last Room of One's Own post. Hopefully by now you're all feeling at home in my writing room. The photos are of my Stonewylde reference books - such a huge luxury to have them all together like this. I have hundreds and hundreds of books and previously, they were scattered all over the house and in the attic. Since moving to this house, I've been able to sort them out. Many are still in boxes in the garage and Narnia (more about Narnia in a minute) as we've run out of bookshelves, but I've pulled out the most vital ones that I know I may need to consult when finishing the Stonewylde series. This funny bookshelf unit was an old e-bay purchase and is meant to fit under the stairs. I used it at the old house to store the Stonewylde T-shirts and greetings cards, stationary etc but it was never very good for that. Now it's absolutely perfect for my books and keeping them in categories. I have one area just for information on wild flowers and fungi, for instance, and another for books on herbalism, and so on. It was such fun categorising them all and re-discovering some old favourites. When I've finished writing the series I shall treat myself to some serious reading whilst I think about what comes after Stonewylde.

The second photo shows the small door in my room. The picture the other day of my purple throne-chair had a weird amber sparkly thing in the background - this is the door into my room. Our house is a rather strange early 1970s creation - I'm sure it was very avant-garde in those days. It's built like a great wedge of cheese and has some unusual features, such as four internal doors made of teak with amber glass. When we first saw the house we both thought "Ugh - those will have to go if we buy the place." But I think we've both come to love them, along with some of the other more bizarre features.

The little white door you see above is small - less than five feet high. It leads into a cupboard which reminds me of the dreaded cupboard used for Leveret's torture (and if you don't know what I mean here, then you need to read Shadows at Stonewylde!) with a very sloping ceiling, and this leads, through an even smaller door (like in Alice in Wonderland) into a long sloping loft space that runs the whole width of the house. I call this Narnia, obviously, as it's reached through a sort of wardrobe.

I have a fur coat - which I hasten to add I didn't buy and have never worn, but inherited when my mother died. She was bought it by my father in the early 1960s when such things were seen as status symbols and almost de rigeur in smart circles. When we've worked our way through unpacking the dreaded boxes stacked up in the cupboard, I shall hang this beautiful fur coat in the wardrobe and then Narnia will become real, I'm sure. In the meantime it's quite exciting sitting here knowing that the little door leads into another world. When I find them, I shall stick many of my special cards and pictures on the white door and it'll look lovely and even more magical.

Yesterday I nipped out (well, it took ages but nipping out was the plan) to Hobbycraft on the other side of Reading to buy a few big pieces of paper. I ended up buying a huge sketch book as it worked out cheaper - it's A2 with 50 sheets of heavy grade cartridge paper and thick covers of black board. I'm about to use it now and next week I shall tell you about it (no, I haven't taken up art-work - I'm useless at drawing and leave that to my clever sister at Helixtree). But before I start using it, I think those plain black covers need a little embellishment. Or is that just a displacement activity?

Have a lovely weekend, dear Stonewylders. Thanks for reading my blog this week and taking the trouble to post comments too; so inspiring and encouraging for me. Now where did I put my silver stars and glitter ....

A Room of One's Own - part 3

So ... the cup of tea. I'd just finished painting my room, ready to start Book 5 after Yule. It was now almost the end of November and pretty hectic. We'd been in our new home less than a month and were still surrounded by boxes. Yule was approaching - always very busy for us as all my children come home for the duration, plus one of my sisters, and then we have many other family visitors to stay during the holiday period too. But I'd already arranged an extensive Waterstones book-signing tour to promote the four books published this year and had to honour all the engagements.

I arrived in Staines Waterstones a little frazzled as always - I can never find the place. I should be able to by now, as this was my fourth visit here since the first book was self-published back in 2005. Staines was the very first place where I ever did a Waterstones book signing event - a lady called Maria had somehow discovered the book and called me in great excitement to arrange a visit. I was terrified. It went alright-ish apart from some heckling from a band of yoofs (one day soon I'll blog about Waterstones signings in case any other writers who haven't yet done a book signing event are interested). Since then, I'd been invited back here three more times. Maria had long left but the staff at this branch are always very welcoming. This is not always the case, so it's with relief that you turn up on time on the allotted day to find a table and chair have been provided, a supply of your books are actually on it, the promotional materials sent by Nina Douglas my publicist at Orion are on display and the staff smile at you in welcome.

One of the sad things is that book-sellers come and go, so even when I've visited the same branch before, often the people there are different. Plus I am absolutely useless at remembering names - so with apologies I say that a very lovely bookseller looked after me that day and whilst I was unpacking my signing pen and leaflets, she made me a cup of tea. And served it in THE MUG!! A mug the exact shade of purple that could be found lurking under my fingernails and with the wonderful title "A Room of One's Own". I squealed with joy but luckily the mug and tea remained intact. I had of course seen the retro Penguin merchandise around before, but not this particular example.

I immediately decided that I had to buy a mug like it, but to my huge disappointment, the lady told me it was no longer on sale in the shop. Much later, having sold lots of books, drunk more tea and eaten some of her amazing home-made shortbread, it was time to pack up and go home. And she took the mug away, washed and dried it, and presented it to me with a hug!! I can't believe that I've forgotten her name as she was so kind and I absolutely treasure the mug. It is sitting at my elbow and contains dregs of tea (fresh) right this moment!

Of course I then realised I had to read the book itself, and ordered a first edition (see photo) that I found online for only about £4. This was published by Penguin Books in 1945, although it was originally published in 1929. My copy, in very good condition, has a label inside saying "Clare and Peter West" and some old-fashioned writing in blue ink saying "Peter W. Clifford West, March 9, 1946". In fact the book, as many of you probably already know, is actually an essay, based on two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October 1928.

As with any Virginia Woolf prose, it's beautifully written and also very thought-provoking. The title of her original papers was "Women and Fiction", and she discusses this from a 1928 perspective. Women had only recently won the vote, and the literary world (the whole world in fact) was dominated by men. It's a wonderful little book to read, and Woolf states that in order to be freed of the constraints of family demands, lack of space etc, every woman who aspires to write should have a personal income of £500 p.a. and a room of her own. She says that without this, it's almost impossible for a woman to find the time, energy or privacy to concentrate for any length of time and create something worthwhile.

As I read her book I smiled, many a time. I remembered my attempts to write, surrounded by teenagers, cats, blaring music and computer games and with four of us to support through my full-time teaching job. I imagined the refined Mrs Woolf staring at me in perplexity as my fingers flew over the keyboard and I ignored plaintive requests for food/clean T-shirts/help with homework. Of course she's talking about creating a work of great literary merit, not a simple story such as Stonewylde, but even so ...

She discusses authors such as Jane Austen and the Brontes, and says," ...the middle-class family in the early nineteenth century was possessed only of a single sitting-room between them. If a woman wrote, she would have to write in the common sitting-room." This really made me smile. But it also reinforced my great excitement and sense of good fortune at finally possessing "a room of one's own". And of course, the mug to match!

Quoted from "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, Penguin 1945

A Room of One's Own - part 2

Since meeting Mr B over six years ago, we've been living together in rented houses. This October, finally, we bought our own house together. There'll be lots more about this house as it's so lovely and the garden is just wonderful. But one of the exciting things about the house is that finally, I have a room of my own in which to write.

I'd imagined that the little back bedroom that overlooks the garden would be fine for me to squeeze a chair into and sit with my laptop, tapping away. But Mr B had other ideas - it wouldn't be a spare guest room (we have eight children between us, all of whom come to stay with varying degrees of regularity) for me to camp in, but my own writing room which occasionally may have to be converted into a guest room if space was tight. This totally altered the dynamic of it for me and made me very excited indeed. Mr B is very good about my "bits and pieces" but his children, unused to such strangeness, have shown puzzlement and even disgust at my collection of bones, skulls, snake skins, stones and bits of wood. I also have loads of cards and pictures (mostly of hares, crows and owls!) that people have given me over the years and which I've always wanted to cover the walls with. I have many pretty, sparkly things that need to be dangled and draped. And as for my reference books ...

Before Yule, I decided to paint my room. It was a pale minty green which was nice, but didn't feel right. I opted for a vibrant shade of purple - one of those ones that they mix up for you in the shop to just the right shade - and it's called amethyst something. It's gorgeous. The room is very small but perfect for me. All the furniture is "recycled" (lots from e-bay) and I have the old wicker chair I sat in whilst doing the re-writes of the first four books. I was going to chuck it out when we moved house as it's enormous and very tatty, but it's great for writing in. You can sit all day in it without getting back or neck ache and there's room for a cat to lie behind your head and another to curl up by your side. I've covered it with a wonderful Celtic dragon throw I bought ages ago at an MBS event. The room isn't finished yet (can't find the box with all the natural objects in, nor the cards and pictures!) but my books are on shelves and it feels just right in here already.

So now I'm sitting on this chair and Book 5 is jostling in the wings of my imagination. I didn't get terribly far yesterday. Someone (sorry - I can't look back and check who whilst writing this) said it was 95 days I think - is that right? Does that include weekends? I had a panicked few hours when I couldn't find a load of research I'd already done two years ago for Book 5. It was pretty extensive and took me ages, on all sorts of subjects which I can't tell you about as it would give the plot away completely. Yesterday I decided to read through it all but couldn't find it anywhere on my laptop. Panic!! But later on I did find it, in a folder called "Shadows". How daft.

I've also started a quick re-read of Shadows to get me right back into Stonewylde. It's very, very strange reading your own book - a bit like contemplating your own grown-up children really. You know you created them, you remember them as little ones who needed nurturing, but now when you look at them they've become something entirely wonderful and separate and surprising. You simply can't believe they ever sprang from you.

Tomorrow I shall tell you about the Virginia Woolf connection. It involves a cup of tea and a very lovely bookseller in the Staines branch of Waterstones. But now the red kites are calling outside and I need to get back to Clip and Cherry who are waiting for me in Clip's tower. I also need to find all my planning notes for Book 5. I like to record my research on the laptop but I do all the planning and plotting in a big hardbacked notebook. I hope it wasn't lost in the move!

A Room of One's Own - part 1

I won't make any comment on the size of the gap between this post and the last. But rather than archive this old blog I decided to resurrect it as I embark on writing the fifth and final book in the Stonewylde series. This blog will hopefully be something to focus me each day before I start writing. I do apologise to the people who signed up to follow my blog and were then left dangling for almost eighteen months. I shall try to amaze you with the regularity of my entries over the next few months.

It's January 3rd. My deadline with Gollancz for the first draft of the book is the end of March. I haven't actually counted the days (anybody care to do it please?) but it's not a huge amount of time for writing a whole book. I need to get cracking. There again - I wrote the first draft for what turned out to be the first three books in the series in little more than four months - and that was whilst working full time as a teacher.

Now I have the luxury of uncontested time and energy each day instead of a few measly hours after work when I'm tired. And I also now have a room of my own! The first four books were written in my little terraced house in Dorset. My eldest son was at University in Bristol, but my other two teenage boys were living at home, the youngest still at school. We had seven cats and one open-plan living room. I wrote the books sitting on the sofa using my school laptop, whilst the boys played noisy games on the PC behind me and had Kerrang!! blasting out of the TV in front of me. Next door neighbours on either side thundered up and down their stairs. There was no privacy and no personal space. Cats regularly jumped on me and boys regularly wanted food and mothering, whilst the dust and washing piled up all around us. I ignored everything and just wrote and wrote ...

I can't post the picture I'd planned to accompany this first blog entry because of "technical hitches". I won't moan but grrrrrr - life was simpler when it was just me, my basic digital camera and my basic laptop. I'm now married to a man who works with computers and really, that only makes this technology stuff worse. Nothing works for me, I can't mess around with things in case I really mess it all up and I feel completely useless. So this is a bald and picture-less entry I'm afraid. Tomorrow when Mr B has waved his magic wand there'll be a photo of my inspiring purple things in my own room. And I also may be able then to update the pictures of my old, self-published versions of Stonewylde into the glitzy new Gollancz versions and add the fourth book. Perhaps though I'll leave the photo of me looking younger and more glamorous than I do today!

Yesterday I read "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf. I'll explain the synchronicity of this tomorrow as I must keep these blog entries reasonably short and sweet and not ramble into displacement activity that keeps me from what I really must do. Jan 3rd to Mar 31st - HELP!!!