A Room to Relax - A Writer's Room

Our house is currently on the market. Last week a family came to look round and the little girl announced at once: "This is a boy's room".

Well, I'm not a boy but I invite you to have a look at a few of the objects adorning my room to see if you share her viewpoint. This is the room in which I do most of my writing. There are a few less antiques than last time, and a lot more yellow!

The Avengers Shelf - Mr Men meet Marvel!  A combination of two great franchises.
This shelf was made by my brother and has a secret compartment (currently empty, I'm afraid).
At the moment it is housing the books I have no intention of sharing!

Meet the Watcher Bears - Eight teddies dressed and equipped as the immortals
from my fantasy novels. These were clad as a gift from my youngest sister,

Growing up in Orkney no room is complete without a Jane Glue picture. We have one
in almost every room of the house. The Northern Lights were a source of magic and
mystery to me, and Dad was photographing them long before digital cameras were around.

My first piece of fan art! This is the family featured in "Beneath Black Clouds and White"
available here. This is the prequel to my first novel.

A cupboard of keepsakes

Without doubt one of my favourite books of all time! Here are D'Artagnan and
Athos (my ideal hero) - in Toby Mug form - from The Three Musketeers.

A pair of bejewelled tiger boxes - I have never seen any quite like this;
with their stands designed to look like coins and aggressive stance.
I'd love to know their provenance before I picked them up at an auction.

Inscription in a 1824 publication of Byron's conversations with Thomas Medwin.
I am left wishing my signature was as impressive as this one.

As close as I can afford to owning anything written by the man himself!
A facsimile of a letter from Byron to Hobhouse.

The Black Knight
This chap looks amazing when I turn the Tetris lamp on beside him!
This is a signed and framed engraving - also bought from the local auction!

My typewriter - still waiting for a new ribbon!

And a couple of books which stay on my desk. Great for dipping into for
inspiration, research and wit.

Every morning, from May through to August,
I am woken up by little rainbows from this.
This makes having to get up far more bearable.

A print of the Eynhallow Hoxa Tapestry. Eynhallow is an island in Orkney,
seeped in mystery and folklore. It sits in one of the most unpredictable and
perilous stretches of water in the world. The story of Thorodale was taught to us in
Primary School and has stuck with me ever since. This was a gift from another sister.

One of 500 prints of Lord Byron in Nottinghamshire. Not quite how I
imagined him to look, but a cute Boatswain and an insight into how
other people viewed the world and times of Byron.

My door signs.
V for Virginia, Team Snowman (which was the winning
partnership in our Table Football Competition two years ago - very cutthroat event!),
and a sign with my alter-ego that my brother made . 

Like it? Share the adventure:
Day's Dying Glory for eReader - 99p

Day's Dying Glory in Paperback - £9.99

A Holiday Unlike Any Other

There’s a scene towards the end of The Return of the King when the hobbits have returned to The Shire and everyone is in the tavern, oblivious to the fact that anything life-changing has happened.  Leaving aside the fact that this was not at all like the book, it is the silence and expressions of these four characters which mirror my own.

Dunalastair Estate of Outlander fame
and our destination for Easter

Usually, after a two-week holiday, I grumble a little bit about where the time has gone and bemoan the fact that I’ve wasted it.  I never really did outgrow that.  This time, though, I don’t know how I’ve fitted it all in.  I’ve clocked up over 2000 miles on the road, visited one of my stomping grounds, and discovered riches and ruins of Highland Perthshire.  But it’s not that which left me in a confused limbo between worlds.  I became a published author.

My new book with hundreds of its ancestors

at Innerpeffray Library

After travelling back home to the far north of Scotland, I wandered around my local Tesco with a feeling and expression akin to those four hobbits.  No one in the shop knew – or cared – about the whirlwind adventure I’d been on.  But certainly, I feel I’ve accomplished a great thing.

It’s frightening putting yourself out there.  After all, your soul must leach onto the page a little bit to create a story which is worth sharing.  I’ve been performing since my age was in single figures, sometimes even for local or international dignitaries, but I’d never been as scared as I was standing in front of people and reading my own text to them.  I really felt I was baring my soul, and not just to the people who were at the book launch events, but to the whole world.

Thankfully, at my first event, the Duckegg Theatre Company were there to enact some of the scenes.  And what an amazing job they made of it!  [Full videos are on the Facebook page]

The second event had a much more intimate setting in the beautiful hidden gem of Innerpeffray Library, an historical venue, perfect for the book launch.

An author in her natural habitat: A library!

You can read the blog about the two launches here.

Why have I told you all this?  Well, to say thank you, really.  This thing which passed so many people by in silence and obscurity has meant a great deal to me.  So, to you who have discovered this blog; have read the book; have attended and even performed at the launch events: Thank you.  It may not seem like a big thing, but it’s the world to me.

Taken from your words written in the guestbook.

The book is here in paperback and here in ebook format.  And here’s a section to whet your appetite:

CHAPTER FOUR

Sunday 7th September 1806

Summer in Petrovia Lodge lacked the exciting comings and goings of London, but it was far from dull. The company of the three sisters had improved immensely and they now spent every moment laughing over things that occurred and celebrating the long summer days. The gypsies had moved on now leaving, as usual, gifts for the family in exchange for the permission to reside on their land. The usual gifts of wooden pegs and finely carved figures of animals were left by the river, but in addition Madame Kerina paid a visit up to the house. It was the eve of their departure and she walked up the lawn, calling out in a strange language and in a loud voice so that the five inhabitants of the lodge rushed out to see what it was. She walked up to Arabella and tied a soft red ribbon about her neck.

‘I have seen a child on the lawns of Petrovia Lodge. Do not wear the black of mourning for long, my dear. I hear wedding bells ringing, with laughter but a taste of sorrow.’

‘Wedding bells?’ Arabella whispered, hardly daring to believe the witch who stood before her, yet desperate to do so.

Madame Kerina did not speak again but hobbled away back to the settlement of caravans. Each of the women looked down at the ribbon around Arabella’s neck and, as one, her sisters began congratulating her as though it never occurred to them that the divination may have been incorrect.

September made its appearance in its usual golden way while summer clawed at the earth, doing everything it could to maintain its hold. The fruits of the trees by the river shone as they grew and, where edible, the girls walked down each day to collect them.

‘Nothing tastes so good as a freshly picked apple,’ Catherine announced as she bit into one.

‘We are meant to be taking them back up to the lodge, Cat,’ Imogen replied. ‘We’re already behind with this, and we stand no chance of getting to the top of the trees as Hamish used to.’

‘I can get to the top,’ Catherine replied fearlessly, gripping the apple she was eating firmly in her teeth and commencing the climbing of the tree.

‘You know you should not compare Cat to any man, she has to beat them.’ Arabella looked up as Catherine called down.

‘A messenger! I think we have a letter!’

National Poetry Day - Lachin Y Gair

The fact remains - though many have tried to persuade me otherwise - that I am convinced there is no better poetry than that produced by the Romantic Poets (definitely worthy of the capital letters).  "Day's Dying Glory" is a direct quote from the poem below, and to this poem I owe a great debt for inspiring me and encouraging me to dream of these same majestic images as Byron did over 200 years ago.

And Lochnagar hasn't changed much in that time!

Given Byron's fleeting and unstable life, I find it particularly meaningful that he chose to create a work of such depth and longing for an unmovable giant.  I like to think that he was expressing love, not only for the days of his childhood (which clearly feature), or the events of the '45, but for everyone who had gone before him and used the eternal mountain as a source of inspiration and connection to their land.

And that is how I view his poem.  It is not something for a day, but something for an eternity, as poetry should be.  It is as relevant to the wishful longing of Scots today as it was then.

Happy National Poetry Day!

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye garden of roses!

In you let the minions of luxury rove;

Restore me to the rocks, where the snowflake reposes,

Though still they are sacred to freedom and love:

Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,

Round their white summits though elements war;

Though cataracts foam ‘stead of smooth-flowing fountains,

I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wandered;

My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;

On chieftains long perished my memory pondered,

As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade;

I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory

Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star;

For fancy was cheered by traditional story,

Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr.

“Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices

Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?”

Surely the soul of the hero rejoices,

And rides on the wind, o’er his own Highland vale.

Round Loch na Garr while the stormy mist gathers,

Winter presides in his cold icy car:

Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers;

They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr.

“Ill-starred, though brave, did no visions foreboding

Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause?”

Ah! were you destined to die at Culloden,

Victory crowned not your fall with applause:

Still were you happy in death’s earthy slumber,

You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar;

The pibroch resounds, to the piper’s loud number,

Your deeds on the echoes of dark Loch na Garr.

Years have rolled on, Loch na Garr, since I left you,

Years must elapse ere I tread you again:

Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you,

Yet still are you dearer than Albion’s plain.

England! thy beauties are tame and domestic

To one who has roved o’er the mountains afar:

Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic!

The steep frowning glories of the dark Loch na Garr.

What's In A Title?

I'm lucky.  I've always had poetry in my life.  Starting with the earliest nursery rhymes and passing through the works of the powerful wordsmiths such as Alfred Noyes and Walter de la Mare, to the poems my mother wrote for myself and my siblings.  Poetry has been an ever present force.

Countless years ago, when I was ten, I was bought an encyclopedia of famous people.  Amongst the hundreds of entries in it there were also some quotes and, on reading one such quote, an inexplicable interest was triggered.  The quote was:

"'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction"

I was so taken by this that I read in earnest about the man who had created it.  It was a child's encyclopedia so, as you would imagine, great chunks of this man's life were omitted.  But, nevertheless, the appeal of Lord Byron's writing had caught me.

Years later, I made the discovery that Dark Lochnagar, a song I loved hearing The Corries sing, was taken from the poem Lachin y Gair by Lord Byron.  That I had found an inspiration in this song, without knowing that Byron was the author, only emphasised the appeal his words had for me.  The pensiveness and loss (this poem was written far from the mountain it describes and with little hope of returning to it) gave rise to the inspiration that created Day's Dying Glory.  I also discovered that the third verse, perhaps the most evocative in writing, had been missed out from the song.

I've learnt a lot more about Lord Byron since then.  I recently described him as a man with a questionable moral compass, which I feel might have been a generous description given some of his outrageous behaviour.  But it cannot be denied that, as poetry goes, this man was a genius.  His use of language to paint settings is second to none, and his meter always matches his story.  The three words of his that I have borrowed to name my novel speak with far more imagery than you first anticipate, and the more I consider them, the more I see that they do not just describe a sunset, but a turning point.  A turning point in a day, and a turning point in a life.

It would be wrong to imply that Byron's writing was my sole inspiration for this book.  I have drawn inspiration from writers including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Ann Radcliffe.  As well as these authors, Sir Walter Scott's poetry is made mention, and I am lucky enough to own a first edition of "Ballads and Lyrical Pieces", a book that features in my novel.

But without wanting this comment to turn into an essay (though every year I keep meaning to enter the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association Essay Prize), Byron's poetic legacy clinches top spot for me.  When you can extract three words from a writer and have them tell their multifaceted story, that is inspiring writing.

So, what's in a title?  A lot more than it seems!

[Day's Dying Glory has been distributed to the libraries listed in our first blog]