Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts

Friday, 26 April 2013

W is for....


1) Writing and writer: I am running my first two sections together today, because it’s the same stuff! I have been writing all my life, and was greatly helped by the school I attended in getting my writing accurate - we had to write an essay every weekend. But this did not help creativity, so it was quite a while before I started to write fiction. I started my creative writing with poetry as that was encouraged in school, but we were never asked to write an actual story. However, I have overcome that and now have published my first novel, and have the second to work on for publishing. My third is half written, and is suffering from my distraction by the AtoZchallenge!
Here is a poem that has been published in ‘Circle Time’, the third anthology by the Dalkey Writers’ Workshop. A Marché Nocturne is like a food court in a village square. They are held during the summer in many towns and villages in the Périgord region, and we love attending them.

Marché Nocturne
Serried poplars, pinkening sky
garlic and mussel scented air
guitar and accordion set up their cry-
it is time to dance at the night fair.

Plump and bald answer the call,
wives in hand, remembering when
these were sylph-girls at a Hunters’ Ball:
thought they would always be young men.

Ancient lessons guide them round
on easy moving feet
that music such a familiar sound,
a happy lilting beat.

They look down with loving eyes,
smile through all the years
connectedness that never dies
enhanced by local wine, or beers

which ooze out of million pores
and stain two dozen shirts,
wives fatter now than years before
and wearing longer skirts

but in his eyes the very girl
he held so close back then,
this gentle move the self-same whirl:
Old bodies still contain young men.

3) Wyethia is a remedy which can be useful for the type of hayfever with an itching palate

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

N is for....


1) Dr Michael Newton is a hypnotherapist in California who accidentally discovered that he could bring people to the ‘life between lives’ or spirit world. He was doing a past life regression for a woman who spontaneously said that the reason she was unhappy was that her soul group had not come to earth with her this time, and that she was all alone. This is where taking a past-life experience as a metaphor, and actually thinking there might be some truth in all this ‘nonsense’ may have to part company. I’ll be talking more about reincarnation under ‘R’. Michael Newton regressed about 8,000 subjects into what seems to be the spirit world, and published his results in ‘Journey of Souls’ and ‘Destiny of Souls’. The amount that different peoples’ experiences in this hypnotic state produce the same information is quite compelling. I have found that my own clients also experience a range of things within Newton’s described range, even if they have not read his books. It is very intriguing. My own experience in the ‘life between lives explained to me something about why I am as I am.

2) I have No idea really why I wrote a Novel. It was just a Notion I got, and there it is! Number one in a set of Novels that are Not a series. I am Not Naive, or particularly Negative, but No-one much is buying it yet and that is Not Nice! Please take a little Notice of my literary (!) baby!! I would Not like it to be a Non-event....

3) Nux Vomica.  The hangover remedy. 

Thursday, 4 April 2013

D is for....

1) Dundee. Everything I said yesterday about research also applies to Dundee. One of my characters' past lives is there, so when I had to be in Scotland for some hypnosis training, I took a day trip to Dundee, to make sure I wouldn't get things horribly wrong. I spent a fascinating couple of hours in their wonderful public library, reading the street directories for the relevant year; I was looking for Christian names that would be correct, or at least believable, and discovered that had you gone out in the street in Dundee in the late 1800s and shouted 'William!' more than half the men could have answered. I found it an emotional experience walking the streets my 'Lewis' and 'Dorothy' would have walked, to the extent that I forgot that I had made them up, and texted my husband "I'm sitting looking out over the water, feeling sorry for my people". I hope my readers will find it equally moving.
2) Dad. My Dad died at 62, over 20 years ago now, and when he was ill he told me that one of the reasons he was sad to leave the world was that he had not yet "written a novel, or designed a cathedral." He was trained as an architect, and I am not, which is why I wrote the novel, partly for him, and partly so that on my deathbed I could not be similarly sad.
3) Drosera: for those childhood coughs that start "the minute the child's head touches the pillow" at night, while during the day things have not been too bad.

Sunday, 31 March 2013

An Easter present!

So, suddenly, I'm published! I never thought it would be so simple at the end, but there it is, my book is on my Kindle, and it looks great! It went live at about midnight, so is the first time I've been given a non-chocolate Easter present. Now I can do the A to Z challenge without interruptions, unless of course I manage to get the book into print too....

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

It's nearly here!

Publication grows closer - this is the cover for "Despite the Angels". Of course, it won't look like this for a while, until I get it into a paper version. But I hope it will be an Ebook pretty soon, I am really looking forward to lots of feedback!

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Thursday 23rd February 2012. Lift off !!

Hi, I'm Madeline, with two novels written and tired of listening to my friends saying 'but JK Rowling got loads of refusals before she was published'. So did thousands of others who never got the break. And JKR was a lot younger than me when she started....
So I'm joining the ranks of 'indie authors' and going to publish one myself. Online, to start with.
I have signed up for a course in how to do this, and one thing they said at the introductory talk is that a blog would be a good idea, to get the news out there, so here I am.
What I thought would be a vertical learning curve (setting up a blog) turned out to be a doddle, and here I am in the 21st century....
I won't have much to say until the course starts on 5th March, but I think I'll be quite busy then.

The novel is called "Despite the Angels", and follows Lucy and David, and their guardian angels through four incarnations, as they try to get things right. It's a fun read with thoughtful moments.