New: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne

As individuals we are small in the great pattern of things and  tend to comprehend great events by making them personal. We remember where we were, what we were doing on 9/ll. Some of us remember where we were, what we were doing, when Jack Kennedy was assassinated.

The recent Winter Olympics in Moscow with its elegant closing ceremony and, in tragic parallel, the violent conflict in the ex-Soviet city of Kiev brought to my mind a visit I made to Moscow in 1991 just

Moscow 1991 Coup

after the Yeltsin coup which saw the Soviet Empire cracking at its centre. The city was buzzing with tales of recent events. On weird one was of the wife of the American ambassador distributing pizza to the people on the barricades.

I experienced this post-coup buzz from the centre of the privileges press/diplomatic community in Moscow. As a child of the cold war I realised I was being offered an historic insight and I should make note of it. In three weeks I accumulated six notebooks full of sketches and notes, recording what I heard and what I saw.

Of course there have been – and continue to be - many historical analyses of the politics and processes of the 1991 events. As I said we as individuals are small in the face of great events  and   and remember them at a personal level. As I writer, my reaction to these personal events was in my six notebooks

As a novelist – some years on – I used my notebooks as the basis of  a novel about a middle aged woman visiting Moscow just after the Yeltsin Coup. I have called the novel Journey To Moscow – The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne.

Coincidentally just yesterday I received the first box of the paperback of this novel, which is also now

on Kindle. There is something wonderful about the smell and feel of books that started in your own notebooks, on your own desk. They pile up so nicely.

And as I turn the beautifully fresh pages those crucial days come back, mint fresh, when I as a small individual experienced what was a world event.

The novel is fiction of course but I hope, because of the personal  impact of my experience, that it has real truth at its core.

The Novel? Well this is a first reader’s take on it:

The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne  First Reader Review: - 

'Olivia Ozanne is the writer abroad, the stranger alone, a woman who can see the surface of things and beyond. Well rid of her ex Kendrick and his leather sofa fetish, she comes to stay with her daughter Caitlin. This is post-glasnost Moscow with its fallen statues, burgeoning mafia, newly restored churches, its phones tapped but no longer listened in to, a city that demands hard currency. 

Through Olivia’s eyes we see into the heart of this city and its people. We peer inside their tiny flats into their constricted interior lives, where we meet the mysterious Aunties whose surprising histories, stretching back to the revolution, are slowly uncovered by Olivia. 

    This is a richly painted canvas of an iconic city, in many ways relevant to our understanding of the Russia of today. It is a story about a woman in search of a new self and it’s hard not to fall in love with Olivia with her enormous appetite for life or for that matter her lover Volodya whom she meets at the flower stall.'

  

I'm hoping you like it too. If you read it and like it - and have a minute - would you be so kind as to write a short comment on Olivia's Amazon page  ... w

On Kindle and in Paperback 

 r comprehensible

Character from Portraits: The Young Man in Hat

1926
 Painted by Laura Knight

Building fresh original characters from portraits is another way to add creative play to your writing process

As I have said here ad infinitum, observation is the key to good writing. As novelists in search of fresh, original characters we keep our eyes and minds open and observe people everywhere we go..It is important that we observed  strangers so that we may instantly add our own imagination and insight to what we see on the surface.

One good way to tackle this in a steadier, more focused fashion is to apply this method to observing great portraits - building character from portraits.

Here we add our imagination not only to  artist's observant eye but also her or his interior interpretation of a living human being.

On this page are two portraits of living beings.

It is important just to look and look  at the portraits. Use you eyes, your imagination and your mind. Don't check on the artist or on  her method. Don't consider the sitter's identity.

Just look at these portraits with your mind and your imagination. What do you see? How can you incorporate them into our imagination so that they emerge as an original character to walk into your novel.  Remember this is not an art-crit session, It is a writing session.

1910:
 Painted by Isidore Kaufmann

 How best to do this?

Take one portrait at a time and  write down answers to the following  the twenty questions - deal with each portrait separately No more that two lines for each answer.

1.  What is the sitter called? First and second name please?
2. Why is the sitter dressed in this way?
3. Where is the sitters going  next after the business of the portrait is over?
4.  What is the sitter  thinking/at this  minute?
5. What is the sitter's greatest quality?
6. What is the sitter's greatest weakness?
7. Why are they having their portrait painted?
8. How does the sitter speak?What is his/her tone of voice?
9. What kind of houses do the sitters live in?
10. What can they smell here in the studio? 
11. What do they smell as they walk through their own door?
12. Whom in their life do they love the most?
13. Whom do they rather dislike?
14. What os their favourite season?
15. What is their favourite place?
16. What is thier long held secret.
17. Whom do thye most fear in life/
18. What is the greatest risk they have ever taken?
19. How do they see themselves?
20. Make a list f the colours you see in ech portrait. 

What have you done? You have used the power of your imagination to invent their lives.

Congratulations ! Now,  springing from your notebook will be fresh characters who will move around in your own imagination of their free will and will add surprises and fresh energy to your novel. You have built fresh new characters from portaits by great artists. And there are so many out there...

Happy writing! wx

Le Hot Jazz in the North East - Djangologie

Spent a  great night in good company, in Bishop Auckland Town Hall Theatre where the string jazz group  Djangologie treated us to great string band jazz  inspired by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli  who co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, (described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz.'.)

This  group continue in the inspired tradition of Hot Club de france -each member a viruoso on his or her own instrumants - Emma Flisk handling her violin with a high skill, wit and intuition which Django himself would have relished. Gile Strong and James Birkett in very individual styles reflecting the gypsy tradiditons of Stefane Grapelli with a complex modern.

Group leader Mick Shoulder underpinned it all with the jazzy authority of the double bass. He also composed some of the pieces which the group performed, in addition to their own take on the Hot Club repertoire.

One of my favourite pieces was Artillerie Lourdes (Heavy Artillery) composed and performed by Django towards the end ot World War Two, reflecting the Allied Bombardment with preceded the Liberation of Paris., There are references here to the 1812 overtures too, In a gypsy fashion....

If Djangologies comes to a venue near you, go and see them and be refreshed,

As I say, it was a great night in good copany

I have the CD now, It will be a great track to write to,,,

Listen to them on YouTube  

wxx

Guest post: HOW TO WRITE ROMANTIC FICTION Jane Bidder

 I first met Jane Bidder, who writes under the name Janey Fraser, when we were both writers in residence in prisons at opposite ends of the country.  We got on very well. I have always appreciated  her practical can-do approach to writing and this will be reflected in her forthcoming 'How To ...'  book.

Janey was a journalist for nearly thirty years until becoming a full time novelist. She is also a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter University and a judge for the life story section of the Koestler Awards. Janey lives by the sea with her second husband and a constant going-in and out of older children.

She usually writes family comedy with a strong dramatic twist. Her current novel is ‘HappyFamilies’ published by  Arrow.  As Jane Bidder, she writes social crime novels. Her latest novel is Guilty, published by Accent.

www.janeyfraser.co.uk

Janey writes: 

'By the middle of January, I was beginning to feel like Cinderella approaching midnight. My deadline for HOW TO WRITE ROMANTIC FICTION was nearly nigh. Unlike Cinders, I had days rather than hours until crunch-time but even so, my heart was beating. I’d written the first draft a few months earlier but had to put it to one side in order to do the proofs on my tenth novel , Guilty. This is about Simon, a solicitor who goes to prison for two years for a driving offence – along with the humorous voice of Joanna, the beautiful woman who died in the crash and who acts as a witty commentator Inside.

The two books were like chalk and cheese. But, like many writers with different voices inside, the two actually helped each other. Although Guilty is a crime novel rather than a romance, it helped me to analyse how character ticks and how plot is constructed. It also provided a bit of a break from the different kind of discipline demanded by a non-fiction book.

Guilty is also a love story.  Simon, the solicitor, has just married Claire. They are totally wrapped up in each other until his transgression makes Claire wonder just how well she knows her new husband. It’s a problem which many a romantic fiction heroine has to grapple with. Love at first sight is all very well but what happens when you get down to the nitty gritty of the rest of life (not to mention the plot)?

In fact, a continual piling on of problems after problems was one of my main points in the How To Write a Plot section.  Readers might well get restless if you take the whole book to solve the main problem. (Without a crisis, remember, there’s no sorry story.) But if you allow the hero or heroine to solve the first one and then up the anti (in other words, the pressure), you’ll increase tension. And although that’s not great in real life, it’s a sure-fire seller in the world of books.

Realistic characters are also essential in romance – just as they are in any other kind of genre. Writers are always being asked if they base their fictional characters on real ones. The true answer is that we usually create a mixture. My characters might have an ear from someone I used to know; a craving for doughnuts like a long-dead aunt; and an uncanny sixth sense. The latter is partly fact and partly imagination. Simon, for instance, is certain he can hear Joanna. Personally, I believe that we carry on after life. But Simon himself, certainly isn’t based on a real living person.

Dialogue was another crucial chapter in my Cinderella race to beat the clock. Real people don’t speak like characters in novels and vice versa. If you taped your own conversation, there would be lots of ums and aahs and trivialities as well as (maybe) some riveting revelations.  When writing romance (and other genres too), every word of your dialogue has to count. It needs to push the plot along and also describe the character by showing us how he/she thinks , talks and makes love.

Talking of the latter, I had some real fun and games in the How to Write Sex chapter. Naturally, this involved some research by talking to other writers about how they ‘do it’. Advice ranges from closing the bedroom door to baring all. Personally, I go for the middle approach. That applies to my writing and my love life! After all, a girl needs a bit of mystery….

The whole point of a How To book is to help people get published. So there are lots of hints and tips too from other writers ranging from Katie Fforde to Kate Furnivall. Self-publishing has totally transformed the market but it is still possible to be published by a mainstream name. I spoke to publishers, authors and agents on how to get that elusive book deal.

All this took a lot of midnight oil and several cups of hot chocolate but in the end I made it, with twenty four hours to spare.  Rather disappointingly, my computer didn’t turn into a pumpkin although a hero did come knocking on my door. It turned out to be my newish husband. He’d left his keys behind......'

HOW TO WRITE ROMANTIC FICTION BY JANEY FRASER will be published later in the year by How To Books (Constable & Robinson). 

After The Honeymoon, by Janey Fraser will be published in May by Arrow, Random House. Her current Janey Fraser novel is called Happy Families

Guilty by Jane Bidder (a pen name) is published by Guilty. Currently available on Kindle. The paperback is due out in March.

www.janeyfraser.co.uk

www.janebidder.com

www.janecorry.co.uk

www.facebook.com/janeyfraserauthor

Twitter:

@sophiek_writer

@janey_fraser

Barney Retreat and a A Sense of Place.

I sometimes treat myself to a visit to Barnard Castle in South Durham.

I had just finished a big editing, revising and publishing task and was  sorely in need of a break which, as I am not a walker,  means a ride in my little car to drink a coffee and scribble/and/or enjoy conversation in some congenial place.

The old South Durham town of Barnard Castle is one of my destinations of choice. I go there regularly to drink coffee and scribble.

As a  family we are very fond of this old Weardale town  whose affectionate name in this locality is Barney. Through the years we have shopped there and generally hung out here, Many times we have visited the elegant  Bowes Museum  to look at  its paintings and exquisite artifacts.

 I once spotted  a tiny Roman silver spoon in a case there. It had been picked up in the nearby town of Spennymoor, dropped by some Roman when there was no town there at all - merely a pathway across a moor.

This silver spoon has  found a place in my forthcoming  novel Lines of Desire.

Our own Barney,

It was in the Museum - as part of the Durham Book Festival - that I had a fascinating  In Conversation session with  the writer Adele Parks.

My grandson, the Boy Who Likes  Chocolate went to school in Barney and my daughter Madam Licked Spoon and her husband Sean,  called their border terrier Barney, I'm still not sure whether she named this delightful family member after the town or after the school.

I have posted  on this blog before here and here,   about how important a sense of place is for a writer of  long and short fiction.

And so  my recent R & R visit to Barney made me wonder whether Barney might be an interesting place to locate a story,

Although swept through with a broad roadway dedicated to trade, this small town is full of ginnels and narrow places and has an old mill on the river which some years ago served as a damp and creaking book warehouse and is now being developed.

Charles Dickens famously slept here and dreamed up Nicholas Nickleby. And I myself have some material on the mysterious and much reviled second wife of Sir John Bowes (the one who built the Museum). Her name was Alphonsine and she is a fascinating character. i gathered a lot of material into a box. But it is still there a box - perhaps to re-visit in later times.

I have to admit I'm a bit more attracted to the history of  the old  Barney where carpets were woven and Durham Quilts were made and through whose streets , through the years, have swarmed hundreds of boys from  Barney School to greater and lesser dramatic effect -   later to emerge  into the sporting and public life of the nation.

There surely is a great story lurking in there somewhere.

 So, occasionally stir-crazy from writing and reading all day,  the delights of retreating to Barney and drinking coffee or watching a film in the newly refurbished Witham Hall can count as research.

Can't they?
wx

The Champagne and Strawberry Book Launch

 

 My close writing friend Avril Joy and I had a great Sunday in Durham celebrating the coincidence of the launch of our very different books about our writing process.

Our books are both out on Kindle this week and out in Paperback next week.

We meet regularly to talk and to write together and encourage each other. Avril actually writes beautifully about this process in her book.

But today was to be a pure celebration. And where better to celebrate that in the beautiful Durham City? This is an old haunt – and an old inspiration - of mine .and features in several of my novels. A great place to celebrate.

 The day was a bit damp but that only added a certain sheen to the lovely old streets and to our celebration.

 

We started in the Saddler Café with strawberry tarts and coffee. 

We looked at our books on Kindle and reflected on the amazing creative processes  that allow us to share our work with loyal and lovely readers far and wide. A magical process for all writers.

Not reallu us going to the champagne bar!
The monks bringing the relics of St Cuthbert
to Durham City 

Then we moved on to the champagne bar ...

and toasted our books and ourselves and buzzed with new ideas, new projects and renewed our optimism about – well, just everything.

So just what was it that we are celebrating?

 

Click here to See Avril's Book From Writing with Love 

Click here to See my book The Romancer: A Practical Guide to Writing Fiction  
 

All writers are dreamers, optimists, romancers. Read 'The Romancer'.

New Edition, Updated,On Kindle Now

My revised and updated my How To... book about writing, the  'The Romancer''  is on Amazon Kindle today and will be out next week as a new paperback. 

If you are a writer or wish you were, this book might get you going again or simply get you going for the first time.

If you get to read it and like it let me know. Share your own experience with me.  (Perhaps there is another book in there*...) 

It's not necessary to write a much valued review for me on Amazon, but truly that would be the cherry on the cake...

'Dreamers, optimists, visionaries, enthusiasts, escapists.’ Wendy Robertson declares that all writers are ‘Romancers’.  In this book she explores the way memory and dreaming have been at the roots of her inspiration for her fiction.  Here in 'The Romancer', aspiring and experienced writers will find writing processes and practical approaches – including her forty day plan for writing a novel – to re-imagine their own lives to inspire their fiction and develop their writing. '

* That would make an intriguing new anthology about writing wouldn't it?

A Writer's Afternoon in Very Early Spring.

Afternoon light in my garden

These flowered through winter into spring

 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile.
(As You Like It, 2.1.12-16) 

Snowdrops insisting on their earlu presenc, always come first.

I am longing for some sun and some heat.

Yesterday I dashed out to get the papers and in the sleety rain and the raw wind I was a miserable, cold soul.

I came inside and sat on a long sofa by the fire, turned on a powerful spotlight and read a book from my pile of must-reads. (Adele Geras' Facing the Light)

Warming up. I pulled out a notebook and wrote a list of all the things I have to do this spring, I stopped at fifteen and thought I must try to whittle it down.

I pulled out my drafting book and pored over my sketches for the forthcoming book. I wondered whether it should be a novella. This literary form has been much on my mind lately.

Then I looked  outside saw the dark afternoon light. \My heart sank..

So I went outside and my eye settled on the primulas which - against all odds - have flowered through this damp chill season.

And I knelt down to see the snowdrops insisting on struggling through the detritus of a garden winter.

Hope,  then ...

Compelled to Write - My Writing Process

Today is "My Writing Process" blog tour day, when writers post about their writing process. Last week, the inspired Kathleen Jones, posted hers.  Thank you Kathleen for inviting me on your Writing Process blog tour. I read your post and was inspired.  Click here for Kathleen's post 

My Writing Process

Q. What am I working on?  I have just sent to my agent the completed revision of my novel ‘Herding Peacocks’ about a group of writers on retreat in a house in France and...   ‘You can’t have rules for writers. That would be like herding peacocks,’ says crime-writer Ruthie Dancing, who suspects her plan for a Writer’s Retreat in might be a folly. Still, she gathers together a diverse group of writers - from young Joe, who lives in a homeless hostel, to the venerable romance writer Francine, whose life, going back to World War 2, is at the core of this novel. Then there are the cerebral poet Mariela and sociopathic Abby with her dangerously passive boyfriend Felix. Ruthie’s honoured guest at the retreat  is Booker Prize-winner Kit Hallam. And then there is American actor-playwright Tom Roache who comes join the fun and perhaps nail a part in the film of Kit’s prizewinning novel.’…

I hope my lovely agent and the editors like my new baby. The writing profession is unique in that with each major project we writers are reduced to an anxious infant, hoping that our parents approve of our precious product.

As Kathleen pointed out in her last post this situation is in a changing state with with the independent eBook publishing revolution. I have joined in this, recently using Amazon Createspace to publish my novels Paulie’s Web and Cruelty Games on Kindle and in Paperback. This was a truly pleasing and empowering process that I would recommend to anyone disappointed in the present state of mainstream publishing. My next personal publishing project with them will be to republish my two short story collections Knives and Forms of Flight.

In this intensely weird 'waiting game' I am also waiting for publishers reactions' to my novel Lines of Desire.

This one is  set on the island of Britain in 383 AD when a great love story blossoms between Magnus Maximus, (in the Welsh myth Macsen Wledig), the Roman military leader in Britain, afterwards for five years Roman Emperor. At th ecentre of the novel is Elen the legendary daughter of a powerful British king in the place we now call Wales. Magnus is fascinated by Elen, a gifted Seer and healer who is a ‘pathfinder’ and whose artistic, talented ancestors made straight roads in Britain long before the Romans. Now, as the Roman Empire begins to crumble, these two lovers symbolise the merging of the spiritual, sophisticated Celtic culture (with its esoteric rites and rituals) and the pragmatic military culture of Rome which is beginning to embrace Christianity as a useful political tool. 

At present,ever compelled,  I'm involved in reading and researching  for a novel about an as-yet un-named (do you have any names to suggest?)  ex-military prisoner, painter and poet. It's set in Bohemian London society just after World War Two. 
      I reckon you need to read and explore a hundred sources -  letters, histories, diaries and  artifacts before embarking on a fiction that will spring authentically  out of those times and events. 
      My working title for this one is Wraparound - after a short story written last year out which will be the basis for this novel. More about this on Life Twice Tasted anon...

Q. How does my work differ from others of its genre?    A perpetual drawback for me -  in publishers eyes - is that my work is seen as not sufficiently ‘genre-specific’. This is demonstrated by above, I suppose, by my diverse (some say crazy...) work-in-progress list above.  
      Interestingly this diversity has never been any kind of drawback for my precious readers, who themselves are a pretty diverse, imaginative, intelligent, well-read lot,

Q. Why do I write what I do?  The past-in-the-present dominates my mind, my imagination and my writing. I always 'see' individuals, unique characters in their times. And I tell their stories.
      I have lived through interesting times and have been a compulsive writer since I was eight. Anais Nin once said that writers taste life twice, once when they experience it and secondly when they write it. This so very much expressed my own writing experience that I named this blog Life Twice Tasted.

     My novels are mostly set in some crosspiece of time, place and the unique lives of my characters. Look at my Lavender House,  set in London in the 2010s and goes back to life in the 1960; and The Woman Who Drew Buildings , set in present day Durham City,  which  goes back to Poland in the 1991.  And An Englishwoman in France set in contemporary France  2006 and goes back  through the Middle Ages to even earlier times. . My new novel, Lines of Desire, is entirely set in Britain in 383 AD but in its way looks back thousands of years and forward to imperial attitudes today.

Q How does your writing process work?  My writing process has evolved from the early days when autobiographical scraps stumbled on into stories that were published, then into longer stories that evolved into young adult novels which were also published,  then into much longer adult novels that required reaching and research to absorb the feelings of a time and a place to I could write my novels freely and imaginatively. These were also published.

 (Add to this the practical and personal insights obtained from my five years as writer in residence in a women’s prison, from which emerged my novel Paulie’s Web emerged.)

I suppose my ingrained habit of  writing every day, every year, has meant I have taught myself a good deal about the writing process and how it works for me. I read, think and dream for some months - often years – before a  whole idea emerges, in the end welding all this together into shapes in my head, like iron filings tapped by magnets.

This is the most  exciting part of the process and often happens when I am editing and working on the earlier novel, I sometimes have to fight quite hard  to keep it at bay until I’ve completed and sent off the earlier novel. Like Kathleen Jones I start writing by hand in notebooks and drafting books. (See my last post…)

Then I transcribe and tentatively edit this draft onto my computer,  and play about with it for a time. Then by some kind of organic magic I begin to recognise that I have a novel there.

Then I print off the whole novel and look at it before giving it two buddies - my colleagues at RoomTo Write for their opinion. Then I enter all my own amendments and viable suggestions from my buddies. Then I go through it editorially yet again, And again.

I relish  this editorial stage. It is finicky and detailed – the opposite of the seductively exciting flamboyant early stages where the words flow onto the page and the pages pile up,
       I think all writers nowadays have to develop editorial skills to a high level because publishers are not prepared to invest so much in the editorial process and like near perfect copy and joined up storytelling.

Equally important is the fact that in these days of personal and independent publishing - enabled by companies like Amazon Createspace - the writer her or himself has to ensure the perfection of their own copy before they upload their baby and send it out into the world.  
       For me the kingdom of self-publishing  out there is divided into two categories. One category features good novels so well edited that the reader’s mind never thinks about the edit, The other category features potentially equally good  novels whose under-edited  state sticks out like a sore thumb and does the writer no justice.  Nothing is ever perfect but it is our job as writers now os  to make our babies as perfect as they can.

I am well aware that  everyone has a unique approach to the writing process but I think the great key is to begin by writing freely and very consistently - eventually to create a critical mass of relatively coherent prose text with an original story at its core. In time will inevitably form up into articles, poems, short stories and novels.

        In this critical mass of writing the writer will find her voice, her style, her themes, her  form and the default errors built into her intuitive writing.  Recognising all this through several writing processes must show in better and better writing in each successive novel.

Now I am passing the Writing Process Baton on this Blog Tour to a writer whose work I admire,

So the baton goes on to novelist Avril Joy.

Avril Joy writes novels, short stories and poetry. Her first novel The Sweet Track was published in 2007 by Flambard Press. In 2012 she won the inaugural Costa Short Story Award. .

Click here to  Read Avril

 

Small Aspects of Courage for the Writer

Being a writer demands acts of courage, large and small:

Among the large ones are:

Working entirely alone and sustaining your self belief

Writing with honesty and telling the truth

Tapping into strong elements of your own experience and telling some kind if truth that will relate to more generic human experiences.

Having faith in your vision of the world even if it doesn’t fit the genre-ridden business model of modern publishing,

But in thirty years of writing I have discovered other small acts of courage which involve opening a new notebook and making a start on new work.
 

I’ve written here before about the significance of notebooks - and writing by hand with an ink-pen - as the first stage in serious work, letting the blood flow from your heart down your arm into the ink and onto the page.

One consequence of trumpeting this theory all over the place is that good friends have given me fine notebooks to work in. I’ve just finished working through two such notebooks (fine board covers and stitched spines so the book lies flat …) I left the second one in London with LickedSpoon and am waiting for it to come to me through the post.

So now, beginning a new year and new work I cast around on my shelves and pick up a blank notebook – a present from a friend from the Middle East. This is a wonderful notebook – its cover is a lump of thick hide and its 150 pages in five hand-stitched sections are made of handmade pages pressed with wisps of tiny flowers and leaves.

It takes a small act of courage to mark, to write on such pages.

I see on the front page I wrote New Journal November 2006  Dreams etc and Other Things. Very grandiose. Perhaps fitting for such an extraordinary notebook, there follows some four pages about the death of a great friend and something about leaves on the ground. And about my grandson being away and missing him.

Then, nothing! This notebook has clearly been too beautiful to use - the beautiful pages too precious to mark.

But 2014 is to be the year of courage. So I have decided to use this magnificent object as an ordinary notebook – for writing lists, observations, inspired paragraphs for the new book, for scribbled drawings, and blog drafts like thus

At first it’s like writing my way up a hill, my ink-pen finding its way through a new landscape, dislodging here and there a tiny pressed petal or a strand oif grass. The ink suffaces.

In the end, like many things that seem hard, almost impossible to begin it has been easy. And, as a tiny petal floats off the page it seems like an experience worth writing about. As you can see

I only wish you could feel this paper. Wx

Happy Christmas Dear Friends.

A Heartfelt Happy Christmas Season to all the lovely people -both readers and writers - join me time and again at Life Twice Tasted time and to share with me the oddities that obsessions  that preoccupy my butterfly mind. You are my delight.

Here at LifeTwiceTasted Manor Christmas has arrived 

and at last the tree is up

My good intention for 2014  is

is to shrug off my delight with the idiosyncrasies of grammar. It does tend to split the reading and writing world. Although (as it's still 2013) I am wondering about the subtle magic of prolepsis and litotes ...

Thinking about  2014 I heard this good saying on  - of all things - an American cop-show: 

'If you always do what you've always done you always get what you always did.' 
Makes sense to me. 
So it looks as though 2014 will be a year of change in my life. 

Goody! 

Best wishes for a brilliantly written and well-read year in 2014

Love Wendy