Blog Posts

AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: LUCINDA E CLARKE

18/7/2020

Good morning Lucinda. Welcome to Author’s Corner Revisited. It’s more than six years since I interviewed you about your writing. So thank you for agreeing to come along and tell us how things have progressed in that period.

1. My first question is regarding your African series, and your main protagonist, Amy. How has Amy’s life developed? Did you leave her in Africa or has she moved to another country?

In total I’ve written 5 books in the series, and I’m not sure that I’ll write another as Africa is a melting pot right now. Amie remained in Togodo, my mythical African country and I guess she’ll stay there. She did say she was totally fed up with me and was quite happy if I left her alone. I’ll see how vicious I feel on an off day!

2. Will you be writing any more novels about Africa or have you moved to a different genre?

I have moved to a different genre – psychological thrillers. I’m well into my third book and the “A Year in the Life” series. By the time you publish this it should be with the editor and the beta readers. The first 2 books are set in UK and for the third, I’ve taken my main character Leah to the south of France – I thought she needed some sunshine, although she has complained it’s colder there in winter than she was expecting. I’m sad to say I’ve not been any kinder to her than I was to Amie, but that’s the chances you take when your author creates you, isn’t it?

3. This must be quite a change for you. Can you tell us what prompted you to write psychological thrillers?

It is and isn’t a change – in my writing career I wrote on subjects as diverse as ‘how they make potato crisps’, ‘climbing a ladder safely’, ‘hydroelectric dams’, ‘an interview with Julius Caesar’, and ‘how to split the atom’ – a range of subjects far too long to include here. Why did I do it? Psychological thrillers are popular at the moment and I was hoping to expand my reader base. They are modern day thrillers, not a zombie or werewolf in sight!

4. I know you used to live in Africa and this must have inspired a lot of your writing. Now that you live in Spain, has that encouraged you to write a book set in that country?

Joan, you are the expert here and I don’t know enough about the Spanish psyche to do them justice. Sam, one of the Amie back stories, has a disastrous holiday near Benidorm, but that is as far as I’ve got. I read a lot about Spain when we first moved here and Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett, and that was amazing. I also enjoy your books too.

5. Also I notice that you have two books which have been co-authored. Is working with another author something you enjoy? Were there any difficulties?

I have contributed stories to I think 7 books to raise funds for charities, Macmillan Cancer, a cat sanctuary, clothing for business interviews and a few others I can’t remember now – I contributed stories written alone so I can’t say I have exactly co-authored.

6. Please tell us a little about your latest book. Can you give us a little preview of the plot?

The working title is “A Year in the Life of Deidre ???” and we meet up with Leah Brand again, together with Deidre we met in book 1 and her nightmare of a stepdaughter Belinda. This teenager has become a minor celebrity so I had to give her a bigger part – though it’s hard to write about a teen without all the swear words. The family past has not let go and once again their lives are threatened – an old link up to gangland London.

Thank you so much for talking to us, Lucinda. Your new book sounds very exciting. I wish you every luck with it. Maybe after this one you'll consider writing a psychological thriller set in Alicante.

As they say, thank you for having me Joan – I’ve always thought that is a silly phrase, but I do mean it.
I guess I would like to add that writing a full length book is a much bigger task than writing an hour long television script. If you had told me in 2013 when I published my first autobiography “Walking over Eggshells,” that 7 years later I would be scribbling book 15 I would never have believed you.
I get very cumbersome updating the info every time I bring a new one out. It’s the marketing that defeats me. I know how, but I simply hate it.
If anyone wants to connect and receive my newsletter each month – competitions, facts, other authors and news I’d love for you to join me. http://eepurl.com/c-GqWr
The sign up comes with a free book about the very Worst riding School in the World.

If you want to read more about Lucinda and her books
you can find her on :
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AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: JG HARLOND

4/7/2020

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Six years ago I ran a blog called Authors’ Corner and interviewed a number of up and coming authors. I thought it would be fun to see how things had gone for them in the last six years and whether they were still writing.

Today we're speaking to the novelist and crime writer JG Harlond.

Good morning Jane. Welcome to Author’s Corner Revisited. It’s been a while since I interviewed you about your writing, so thank you for agreeing to come along and tell us how things have progressed in that period.

My first question is regarding your historical novels THE CHOSEN MAN and THE EMPRESS EMERALD, have you developed either of these excellent stories into a series, and if not, why not?

A: Thank you for inviting me back, Joan. A lot has happened in the past six years; five more books in my case, including a new version of The Empress Emerald for my American publisher.

The Chosen Man was the first in a trilogy. After his wickedness in Holland during the tulip scandal, Ludo da Portovenere goes on to make mischief in Goa and Lisbon in the spice trade, then becomes involved in a secret treaty between Charles Stuart and King Felipe of Spain in Madrid in A Turning Wind. The third story sees him selling part of the English Crown Jewels on behalf of Queen Henrietta Maria and finally coming to terms with his real identity, and finding a proper home and happiness. This almost closes Ludo’s story – all of which is based on real events – but he does have two feisty daughters who may very well take to the seas to create a little havoc of their own, so I shall be revisiting and researching the 17th century again. Next year perhaps.

Glad to hear that you haven't closed the door on that exciting period in history but I hear that you have turned your hand to writing crime fiction. This must be quite a change for you. Can you tell us what prompted you to do it?

A: I’ve been involved in crime from the beginning, really. It started with The Empress Emerald. If you remember, the cover tag line is ‘Stolen: a child, an identity, and a priceless jewel’. The Chosen Man Trilogy includes all manner of crimes as well; these fall squarely into the historical crime category. My Bob Robbins Home Front Mysteries Local Resistance and Private Lives are more along the lines of the ‘traditional British crime’ and ‘detective novels’ – in historical settings. Local Resistance is set in Cornwall and involves smuggling, spying and the little-known British Resistance movement that was known to some as ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’. Private Lives is a murder mystery set in North Devon during the preparations for D Day.

During the last six years, has being an independent author become easier and if so, in which ways?

A: Up to this year I have been a traditionally published author, but I am becoming an ‘indie’ now with the Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery series – which is more specifically British in content and humour. Writing and getting books published whichever route you take or prefer, is never easy, but so far, so good. I enjoy seeing my ‘pages read’ count on Amazon each day.

If you could choose one character from all your books, who is your favourite and why?

A: That’s difficult. I’m very fond of Ludo, largely because he says and does things I would never dare to. But Ludo can’t be trusted – until Book 3 anyway. I also have a soft spot for Bob Robbins: we share the same ironic, dry humour – which gets us both into trouble now and again.

Please tell us a little about your latest book.

A: Private Lives opens on the North Devon coast in 1942. Detective Sergeant Bob Robbins, who has been called out of retirement for the duration, is enjoying a few days’ holiday when he becomes involved in a shooting incident on a derelict farm. An elderly farmer lies injured, and then disappears. A young man is found shot in the chest in the barn. Bob reports the incident to the local police force in Bideford, but they are so over-stretched with extra duties he finds himself in charge of the case. Knowing he can’t manage on his own, Bob requests the help of the young police recruit Laurie Oliver, who helped him out in Porthferris (in Local Resistance). They take rooms at Peony Villas, an unusual sort of guest house run by an ex-West End diva, where there is a troupe of London actors in residence, and where Bob finds himself involved in yet another peculiar mystery.
I grew up in Bideford and know the area well, but I tweaked geography and place names a little to avoid embarrassing or annoying locals. This novel was fun to write, but I confess it was also the hardest to date. Balancing the sinister content with the shenanigans of the thespians wasn’t as easy as it might appear.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, Jane and good luck with the new book. Looking forward to reading it. If you want to find out more about Jane and her books you can find her on her web page.

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AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: Keith Dixon

17/6/2020

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Six years ago I ran a blog called Authors’ Corner and interviewed a number of up and coming independent authors. I thought it would be fun to see how things had gone for them in the last six years and whether they were still writing.

Today we're speaking to crime writer Keith Dixon.

Good morning Keith. Welcome to Author’s Corner Revisited. It’s been a while since I interviewed you about your writing, so thank you for agreeing to come along and tell us how things have progressed in that period.

Great to be back! Thanks for having me.

1. My first question is regarding your series of crime books featuring the investigator Sam Dyke. It is obviously very popular amongst readers of crime fiction. How many books have you written now? And how do you come up with new plots for the character?

I’m in the process of planning the 10th full-length Sam Dyke novel and there’s a short story as well. It’s a mystery to me how this has happened! The plots usually begin from a single idea – usually something I’ve read about. It lodges like a piece of grit in an oyster – or a stone in a horse’s hoof! – and has to be worked free, elaborated on, then planned out to make a viable story. Almost all the books can be traced back to a single idea that I let cook in my subconscious until some characters began to coalesce around the idea … and from out of that comes a sequence of events that I can turn into a plot. This is a fun time in the whole process, when you let your imagination run wild … but it can be stressful if nothing seems to emerge for a while. You have to trust that your subconscious is working on it even when you’re not concentrating. Luckily, it always comes up with something.

2. I believe you have been writing a new series. Can you tell us something about that? How does it differ from the Sam Dyke series?

Yes, I have another series featuring an ex-police sharpshooter called Paul Storey. While the Sam Dyke novels are based largely in the North West of England – because that’s where I lived when I started them – the Storey novels are set in and around Coventry, which is where I was brought up. The Sam Dyke novels with one exception are told in the first-person – because I wanted to mimic the classic detective noir style of Chandler and Ross Macdonald – while the Storey novels are told in the third person. Both styles, however, let me wander into the minds and personalities of the bad guys to let us see things from their perspective. This is one of my favourite bits of writing crime novels because you can really let rip on a character! I should add that my last book, I May Kill You, was a standalone featuring another ex-police detective who gets caught up in hunting for a serial killer. This was an attempt to be a bit more of a police procedural, though the hero works with the police, not for them.

3. Do you think that being an independent author has become easier during the last six years, and if so, in which ways?

On a technical level, yes, I think so. The various methods by which we can write and produce our books as both ebooks and paperbacks has become easier, both through Amazon and the other outlets like Draft2Digital, which enables your book to be distributed to a range of outlets like Apple iBooks and Kobo. Also, the more often you do it, the more experienced you become and can avoid the pitfalls. There’s more support available for independent authors, too, both in terms of ad hoc Facebook groups and more professional outfits such as the Alliance for Independent Authors, which is a great organization for authors to be a part of. In addition, YouTube offers lots of videos for aspiring authors, whether at a creative or a production level. You feel that you’re part of a growing community these days, not a weird outlier!

4. You are a prolific writer. When you spoke to us in 2014 you aimed to write three books a year, do you still do this?

Almost! Last year I wrote and published 3 in thirteen months. This year will be slower, I think. It’s going to have taken 6 months to write the current book and I doubt I’ll write another two in the following six. The virus has affected quite a lot of writers like this, I believe – in spite of having even more time to ourselves, it seems to have knocked some of the creative stuffing out of some of us. Not all, of course, but I have heard writers saying they’re finding it hard to concentrate on writing.

5 When writing crime fiction, how difficult is it to get the background, police procedure and forensics right? Do you have specialist contacts you can turn to for advice?

As you might expect, the Internet is a great boon here. In the past I’ve tried to steer clear as much as possible from police procedures because they simply slow everything down … ! But in my last book I had an ex-policeman working closely with an active DCI, so I did a lot of reading to establish police procedures and forensics and so on. The worry is that if you ask questions of active policemen or -women, their answers are going to squash your plot! So one treads a fine line between not being outright silly and maintaining a sort of urgency in the plotting. There are several books written by serving or ex-policemen geared towards crime writers nowadays and they’re very helpful. Also, I try to remember that all of these people are human beings working with other human beings – I’ve worked in collaboration with people for years and I know the kind of rapport that’s built up between you when you’re working in a common cause. Besides I read Colin Dexter say that the only research he did for the Morse series was to sit in a police station for a morning … so I try not to worry!

6. Has your marketing strategy changed very much over the years?

Marketing? What’s this strange notion of which you speak? 😉 I’ve tried several approaches over the years – Facebook groups, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, competitions … none of them seem to have any long-lasting effects. So it’s always a cat-and-mouse struggle where people say, What seems to be working at the moment? For a while it was Facebook ads, and then Amazon Ads came along and they seemed to work well and were flavour of the month for a while … and of course there’s Bookbub, but I’d have to spend over $600 for one ad in my genre and I’m just unwilling to risk it. At the moment I’ve paid for a company to run some Amazon Ads for I May Kill You in the UK, and they had an impact initially. I’m also running Amazon Ads myself in the US. The difficulty is in knowing what’s effective, because the conventional wisdom is that it can take at least 2 weeks for an ad to prove its effectiveness … and by that time one feels any improved sales might be based on market shifts or whims, not necessarily on one’s ads. So it’s difficult! I’m thinking that the best strategy is still just to produce as many books as possible so that they start to feed off one another.

7. Which of your books has given you the most pleasure to write?

Probably The Cobalt Sky. I’d been reading a lot of Ross Macdonald– he’s the creator of the Private Eye Lew Archer. I like his writing style and the fact that his plots are energetic, with the detective tracking down clues and talking to people and solving mini-problems along the way … so I’ve slowly been introducing what I would call an ‘influence’ into my own writing, concentrating in particular on the surface of the writing itself, the use of imagery and metaphor to add depth to the interactions between people, without slowing down the plot! The Cobalt Sky was the second book in which I’d attempted this and I felt I had a better grasp of what I was trying to do in it.

8. Please tell us a little about your latest book. Can you give us a little preview of the plot?

The latest book is called The Two Fathers. In it, Sam is hired by a man who wants him to find out what his wife is up to when she leaves the house at night. The client works at night so can’t do it himself and he’s worried about what his wife is doing. Sam doesn’t like divorce work – shades of Philip Marlowe! – but finally agrees to help. When he does so, he finds himself involved in an intrigue involving a crooked florist, a drug-smuggling conspiracy and a family on the verge of breaking apart. I hope it doesn’t become too obvious, but the backbone of the plot is based on an ancient Greek play, a foundational crime story!

Thank you so much for talking to us, Keith, and good luck with ‘The Two Fathers.'

If you would like to know more about Keith Dixon and his crime novels go to his web page www.keithdixonnovels.com or check him out on Amazon.

If you want to receive a copy of my monthly newsletter or hear about new releases and special offers click here. Thank you for reading.

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Sardines and Bonfires

12/6/2020

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Once again it’s time to gather around a bonfire on the beach, eat sardines and celebrate the eve of San Juan, which coincides approximately with Midsummer’s Eve. In the Christian calendar the 24th of June is the feast of St John the Baptist, or as he is known in Spain, San Juan. The shortest night of the year, known as Midsummer’s Eve or the Summer Solstice, is in June but the date varies according to the calendar—this year it falls on June 20th —but it is usually either 20th or 21st June. It has been foremost to pagan worship for centuries. Ancient peoples, for whom the seasons and the fertility of the land were central to their existence, burned fires on that night to symbolise the power of the sun and to help renew its energy.
Many of these old pagan traditions have been handed down and repeated every year. In some regions, if you jump over the bonfire nine times on that evening, it is said that you will be protected from evil spirits. In the Málaga area, three times is sufficient and you will meet the man you’ll marry. Naturally you have to wait until the bonfire has burnt down somewhat before you try to jump over it, otherwise you’ll have worse things to worry about than evil spirits or a forthcoming wedding.

Another tradition, especially in the north of Spain, is to collect herbs such as rue, rosemary, fennel and lemon verbena. You can either hang a bunch of them in your doorway or leave them in water for a few hours, and then wash your face in the scented water. This will guarantee you good health for the rest of the year. In coastal areas, women who bathe in the sea on that night are said to become fertile. In Málaga people still like to dip their feet in the sea after midnight to ensure they remain eternally beautiful, or have good luck.
But it’s the line of glowing bonfires that stretches along the beach on that night, that is the most spectacular part of the celebration. In some areas people write their wishes on pieces of paper and burn them; in other parts of Spain they make a huge guy from cloth, sawdust and paper and burn it on the bonfire.
The basic ideas behind these pagan traditions are plain, the herbs and plants are good for your health, fire is a protection against evil spirits and water has a purifying effect.
The reason the Christian church has chosen the Summer solstice as the Feast of St John the Baptist on 24th June, is because John the Baptist was said to be six months older than Jesus. As 25th December was nominated as the birthday of Christ then that made John’s birthday in June. As with many things in the religious calendar, on the eve of San Juan we find a blend of Christian and pagan beliefs.

As for the sardines, well they are definitely good for your health, as they are high in Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. They are also very plentiful and in June are at their best.
So, I for one, am looking forward to a warm evening on the beach near where I live, eating sardines and watching other people jumping over the bonfires. I might venture down to the sea and wash my feet; after all who knows?

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BOOKS TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS DAY 5

26/3/2020

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My last book for this week is a real page turner. Set in Iceland it is based on the true story of Agnes Magnusdottir. BURIAL RITES was written by the Australian author, Hannah Kent as part of her PhD thesis.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD.

Set in Northern Iceland in 1829.
A woman is condemned to death for murdering her lover.
A family forced to take her in.
A priest tasked with absolving her.
But all is not as it seems, and time is running out:
winter is coming, and with it the execution date.

Only she can know the truth. This is Agnes's story.

A fascinating glimpse of Icelandic life in 19th century, interwoven with myths and legends that still influenced the islanders way of life and attitudes. This is more than a crime novel.

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BOOKS TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS DAY 4

25/3/2020

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My book for today is INTO SUEZ by the Welsh novelist, Stevie Davies, whose books have often cropped up on the short list but never claimed a prize.

1949: Egypt's struggle against its British occupiers moves towards crisis; Israel declares its statehood, driving out the Arabs; Joe Roberts, an RAF sergeant, his wife Ailsa and daughter, Nia, leave Wales for Egypt. "Into Suez" is a compelling human and political drama, set in the postwar period when Britain, the bankrupt victor of the Second World War, attempted to assert itself as an Imperial power in a world wholly altered. The novel is set in the run-up to the Suez Crisis, a template for future invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent). In this moving story, Joe's tragedy is that of an ordinary working man of his generation: he's a lovely, humorous, emotional man in whom the common ration of racism and misogyny becomes a painful sickness. Ailsa, intelligent, curious and craving to explore the realities of the Egypt she enters, meets on the voyage out Mona, a Palestinian woman who excites in her yearning for a world beyond her horizons. When Joe's closest friend is murdered by Egyptian terrorists, their relationship spirals towards tragedy. Through it all, love remains. Looking back in old age, their daughter Nia follows in their wake to sail the Suez Canal with the aged Mona. Nia has been told her father was a war hero: now she will face a more painful truth.

REVIEW FROM THE GUARDIAN

In Davies's story, Ailsa is an intelligent, self-sufficient young woman from the Welsh valleys who, accompanied by her young daughter Nia, sails out in 1947 to join her husband who is serving in the RAF at Ismalia in the Western Desert. Life in the world's largest military installation has some compensations, such as unrationed cherries in the company store. But the salt marshes of Suez are pitilessly inhospitable – "a lunar landscape as flat as Suffolk and sterile as death" – which leaves Ailsa to wonder "how many Arab labourers died to dig this . . . ditch the Roberts family was arriving to defend as somehow British as the Manchester ship canal"?
Wives of the rank and file are expected to keep their heads down and confine themselves to quarters. Yet Ailsa is spellbound by a sophisticated, dark-skinned concert pianist named Mona with whom she forms an attachment on the boat. Mona's husband is an Israeli army psychologist, which leads Ailsa to assume Mona must be Jewish; yet it transpires that she is an exiled Palestinian Arab.
Also on the voyage is a young German refugee travelling to be reunited with her British husband and a querulous Welsh woman whose hostility towards anything foreign encapsulates the narrow, British fear of displacement. It's a cast of characters whose nationalities and circumstances are as confused and combustible as Suez itself; and though the story culminates in a distressingly well-executed denouement, Davies's main theme is what occurs when protocols are breached and privates' wives drawn into unguarded intimacy with the officer class. "What was Ailsa guilty of? Just getting out of line. Being, not even a black sheep, but a piebald sort of sheep in a field of whitish fleeces."
As the daughter of an RAF officer herself, Davies has firsthand experience of being shunted round the remnants of empire: "The war had beggared and bankrupted Britain. We'd scuttled out of India and Palestine and we'd have to scuttle out of the rest of the Middle East. Scuttling was all we were good for." Davies first dealt with the traumas of being a bullied army child in 2001's The Element of Water; and her picture of the cruel indifference and blind prejudice of the British occupation of Egypt seems to have been further honed by her understanding of the average British forces boarding school.
Davies frames the historical action with the contemporary account of Nia, who travels back to Egypt to meet her mother's friend Mona, still a celebrated and charismatic concert pianist in her old age. Nia's recollection of the 1950s is fragmentary, but formed of vivid impressions such as the sight of "stricken animals bleeding in the water". In one of the novel's most memorable scenes, we discover how bored British troops sailing to Suez used porpoises as target practice. "Ordered to do so, someone said. Uproar. Barbarians! Oh God, porpoises are only fish. Get a grip. Don't you eat fish and chips then?"
It has to be pointed out to them that the creatures are warm-blooded mammals, like ourselves. But the incident serves as an example of Davies's remarkable ability to encapsulate imperial wrong-headedness in a single, indelibly recorded incident: cynical, gratuitous – neither sense nor purpose.

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BOOKS TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS DAY 3

24/3/2020

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Day three and my choice is by an Irish author (in my opinion some of the best writers come out of Ireland) Niall Williams. His novel "HISTORY OF THE RAIN" is a bitter sweet story set in County Clare, where the author lives. It was long-listed for the BOOKER PRIZE in 2014.

We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a long story...
Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil - via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain.
The stories - of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains' Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland - pour forth in Ruthie's still, small, strong, hopeful voice. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the imagination, this is an exquisite, funny, moving novel in which every sentence sings.

And this is my Amazon review:

A mesmerising story, written from the point of view of young girl who is confined to her bed. A kaleidoscope of Ireland's society and recent history, a mixture of myth, legend and literary culture. The girl is a reader and the story is punctuated with references to characters and scenes from novels that she has read. Charming, funny and hard to put down.

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BOOKS TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS DAY 2

24/3/2020

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My choice today is THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS by Robert Dodds, and is for lovers of historical fiction.

"A gripping and absorbing read" HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

It is 1490. Northern Europe is in the grip of sweeping plagues and religious inquisitions, and in daily terror of the Day of Judgement. In the town of Den Bosch, the artist Jerome (Hieronymus Bosch) paints his visionary denunciation of sin and folly, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, while his neglected wife Aleyt strays into sin herself. But Jerome is not immune from the world he portrays. A rival artist and a corrupt Abbess concoct a hellish plot that threatens to destroy him.

Here is my Amazon review:

What a gripping book. I'm not a great fan of Hieronymous Bosch's paintings, skilled though they are—too may demons and visions of hell—so was not sure if I would enjoy a novel based on his life. However the characterisation of the protagonists, especially Bosch and his wife was so true to life that I couldn't put the book down. I just had to know what happened to them. Dodds describes life in the small town where Bosch lives in great detail, showing his extensive research into the period and the course of the Inquisition in the Netherlands. But it's the human side of the story, with all its strengths and failings that brings it to life. His 'bad guys' are truly bad, but we still see a glimpse of why they are what they are. No stereotypes here.

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CHOOSING A BOOK TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS day 1

24/3/2020

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While we are all in our own way trying to survive the coronavirus I thought that each day I would share with you one of my favourite books. You will soon realise that if I find an author I like, then I try to read all of their books. My first selection is a Scottish author and poet, Andrew Greig, and the book is, "In Another Light."

A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown.

Seventy years later Edward Mackay wakes after a major brain trauma. In the hazy shadowlands of illness, he conjures the figure of his dead father, a man he knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But in the tight-knit island community passions also run high.

These were my thoughts on it after I had read it:

What a magnificent book - I never wanted it to end. Greig has such a delightful way with language, whether local Scots or English. He is also a poet and this is very evident in his lyrical prose. In Another Light is the moving story of two men - father and son. The son, recently recovering from a near-death illness becomes obsessed with learning more about his father's life before he met his mother. The novel is set partly in Penang, where the father served as a medical officer, and partly in Orkney, where the son is working on a renewable energy project. The story of the father twists and turns and at times runs parallel to the son's life until it all comes together in the last few pages. It is a fast moving plot and the mystery surrounding his father is revealed clue by clue, with a final twist to the mystery right at the end.

Available on Amazon as ebook and in paperback.

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International Women´s Day 2020

6/3/2020

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International Women's Day, whose theme this year is “I Am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights,” is celebrated on the 8th March. It was first organised in 1909 in New York by the Socialist Party of America to draw attention to women’s rights, and to bolster the demand for women’s suffrage. For years the day was associated with Socialist and Communist movements; in 1936, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibárruri, a leading member of the Spanish Communist Party, headed a commemorative march through Madrid. Then in the 1960s the feminist movement adopted the day as their own, and later in the 70s and 80s, it grew in popularity as more and more women called for equal rights, equality of pay and protection against domestic violence.

Now International Women’s Day is celebrated across the world; in some countries it is a day of celebration, and in others a day of protest; in 2007 a women’s rally in Iran was broken up by police and many people were arrested. In Spain, on International Women’s Day last year, hundreds of women went on strike, either staying away from work or abandoning their normal domestic duties, leaving their husbands to care for the children or the elderly.

Although the situation of equality for women varies greatly from country to country, here in western Europe women have achieved much of what they wanted, especially in Spain. Spanish women have come a long way since the death of Franco, but sometimes it is good to look at the past and see just how far that is.

When I first moved to Spain, I decided to write a book about the lives of women under the dictatorship. I called it Daughters of Spain.

Before the Spanish Civil War, women had gained many rights: they had the vote, and were given full legal status within the state. They could have their own bank account, adultery was no longer a crime and abortion was legalised. Women were allowed free access to the labour market, some limited maternity leave, and the length of the working day was reduced to eight hours, leaving women with more time to work in the home. All that changed when Franco came to power and I found it heart rending to listen to some of the things the women whom I interviewed told me. Like, “J” who was not allowed to have her name put on her baby’s birth certificate because she was unmarried, and subsequently had no rights whatsoever regarding her own child. And “L,” whose husband kept her virtually a prisoner for forty years, without friends and family. Or “MJ” who was divorced, and concluded our interview with the words: ‘Am I happy? Yes, I’m happy with what I’ve done, but truly happy? I don’t know. At least now I make the decisions; first it was my father making decisions for me, then my boyfriend, then my husband; now I make the decisions.’

Will this Sunday be a day of protest or celebration? One of the main issues for women throughout the world is domestic violence. In Spain last September women came out in protest over a summer of violence where 19 women were killed by a husband or partner. By the end of 2019 there had been 55 fatalities. Already this year thirteen women have been killed by their partners or husbands. And that is despite the law against domestic violence that was passed in 2004.
And Spain is not the only country in Europe. In fact it is well down the league table of these horrific crimes, below the UK, France and Germany.

Whatever you do to celebrate International Women’s Day, whether you are 65+ or a teenager, remember that here in Europe, women have a voice. Maybe women haven’t achieved all that they would like, but at least they are going in the right direction and that’s something to celebrate.

By the way, did you know that there’s an International Men’s Day as well? It’s on 19th November. Can’t say I'd heard about it before, but it's focus is on men's and boy's health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models. Sounds good.

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AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: LUCINDA E CLARKE

AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: JG HARLOND

AUTHORS' CORNER REVISITED: Keith Dixon

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International Women´s Day 2020

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