Well, for a start, here I am!
I live with my husband of more than fifty years in a little cottage in Hampshire. We have two lovely daughters and five grandchildren.
I have worn many hats in my life - teacher, actress, artist, lecturer, psychologist - but I have always loved books and I love to write. Indeed, if events get in the way so that there is no time to for it, I feel quite out of sorts. As time has passed, I have accumulated an array of wobbly cardboard boxes on my shelf, each containing a screenplay or a novel, finished or unfinished as the case may be. Most of them reflect my attempts to explore human relationships and emotions in a small-scale, nitty gritty way. I am terrible at self-advertising and am no marketeer, being temperamentally very much out-of-kilter with this 'In your face!', Here I am!' modern world, so most of them remain there on my shelf.
I don't want you to think that each time I sit down at my desk I knock out two or three thousand words with a flourish. I don't. It's amazing how many things suddenly acquire importance when you are faced with a blank page: those clothes that just won't wash themselves, those roses desperate for a pruning, that letter that won't get itself to the post; a really urgent need for a cup of coffee. The children may have long gone, but the husband, of course, needs company and attention. Time passes.
Oh - and it's cold in my study, as I may have mentioned before.
We called the little room that I use the 'Black Hole of Calcutta' when we first moved into
our old cottage, because it was dark and cramped, but then I found out about
the temperature, so now we call it 'The Cold Hole.' The cottage is almost 400
years old and the 'study' (far too grand a title for it) was once the old
buttery. I thought (and told everyone) that a buttery was where you made and stored the butter and
cream and so on, but apparently it's where they kept the home-made beer, in
butts. Because they wanted to keep it very cool, they dug out the floor so that
the level would be below that of the rest of the house and that necessitated a deep step
to get iup and down into it. Have I tripped on that step? Oh yes. Many times.
Oh, yes.
Now on to the novel which I mentioned it earlier in my blog.
'Someday Maybe ' is based on a real-life event, though the setting and the characters are imaginary. Set against a background of English rural life, it tells the story of Jim Norris, a young countryman who is struggling to make a living for his wife, Mary, and their little daughter. When Mary suffers what it thought to be a minor domestic incident, the results are far-reaching, bringing him to the brink of a terrible dilemma. It is published by Sunpenny Publications and if you would like to read it, it is available from Amazon, The Book Depository et al and is also out on Kindle. I am currently working on a follow-up, as people seem to be very interested in one.
Jim and Mary's cottage
The passing of time is something that is an integral part of 'Someday, Maybe', and, indeed, in 'Moving On', the book that is to be published some time this year. I will tell you a little about that in my next.
