Writing

Introducing …

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As today is publication day for ‘Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm’ I’d like to introduce you to the characters. Or rather, I’ll let them introduce themselves!

Matt: I’m Matt. I’m Oliver’s dad, and also Amy’s partner. All I really want is a quiet life and for my lad to be happy. He’s had such a lot of problems in the last few years, after his mum died, and I just want to make things easier for him. If that means sacrificing my own peace of mind so that he can be happy then that’s what I’ll do. Amy will understand. Amy always understands, that’s why I love her so much.

Amy: I was very unhappy before I met Matt. Everything seemed to be going wrong – first my marriage disintegrated and then my mam died. James, my ex, always said I was too soft and I was starting to believe him. But my son Harry kept me going – even though he can be a bit naughty sometimes, he always makes me smile. But meeting Matt made me feel as if life could be good again. He gives me the strength to be myself knowing that he’s got my back. 

Harry: I am very nearly nine years old and I’m the best at sports in this house. I can run the fastest of everyone. Oliver is my best friend, though sometimes he can be dead annoying, especially when he doesn’t want to play. I love stories, though I don’t like reading them. Mam reads the best stories, and Matt’s quite good too. I liked the Titty book which we read on holiday last year. Dad thought it was something rude, but it’s not, it’s just about a girl called Titty who sails boats and has adventures. That’s the best thing about the Lake District, having adventures. I hope me and Olly are going to have some adventures this time!

Oliver: I am nearly ten years old because my birthday is in November and Harry’s is in May so he’s nearly a WHOLE YEAR younger than me, really, even though we’re in the same class at school. I’m the best student in our whole class and sometimes I help Harry, but not if he’s being irritating. I think Harry benefits from having me around to set a good example of how to behave. That’s what all the teachers say. I’m looking forward to Christmas because I’ve got the lead part in the school play. I’m going to be The Elf that saved Christmas, and I’m really excited – and a bit scared too. Perhaps Harry’ll help me because he’s not scared of anything.

Diane: I am Oliver’s grandmother, Diane. His mother, Stella, was my daughter. Since she died … well, never mind that. I like to keep positive. God moves in mysterious ways, as they say. Oliver has been my whole world since Stella .. since she … I’m very fond of him. And Matt has been a very good son-in-law, and I feel a certain responsibility for him. He’s vulnerable, you see, a grieving widower, he’d be the ideal target for the wrong sort of woman. I just want to make sure that Oliver isn’t hurt any more, if anything happened to him I’d … 

Peter: The farm has been in my family for generations, but I’ll be the last of the Thompsons at Elder Fell. An only son, I never married. Never cared to, not since I lost Jen, Amy’s mam, the only woman I ever loved. I asked her to marry me, but she said no. Of course, I understood it. She didn’t feel she could move to Elderthwaite, didn’t feel it would be fair on her daughter. I’m a sheep farmer, first and last, I could never be owt else. Hefted to the land, that’s me, like my dad before me, and his dad before him.

It’s been a while

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I’m afraid I’m not very interesting when I’m not writing anything! So here’s a quick update on what I’ve been doing over the last year or so, since I’ve had anything to write about on here.

Firstly, I had a disaster last Christmas. I was all set up to publish ‘Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm’ last autumn – but then my lovely editor pointed out a few issues that needed some remedial work which I didn’t have time to do before publication day because I was gearing up for an intensive month of work as Mother Ginger (my alter ego who makes all the gingerbread for Father Christmas) in late November and December. So I had two choices – do it in a hurry, or do it properly and publish it in 2024 instead. I chose the latter. And then I couldn’t face touching the manuscript again until well after Christmas when all the fun at the festive farm was over and I’d caught up on some sleep!

I’ve also been working on two other projects.

Firstly, I’ve been writing a play with my best friend, Cath Turnbull. It’s all about the workers at a local munitions factory, the ‘Aycliffe Angels’ and now we’re editing it and trying to find people to read it and give us some suggestions for what to do with it next. It’s called ‘Where Angels Sing’ and features three wartime munitions girls from very different backgrounds. We follow the lives and loves of Mabel, Grace and Kitty who have all been called up to work in the factory, and it’s packed with songs and stories from the real Royal Ordnance Factory at Aycliffe. It has LOTS of parts for women, and very few for men, so it’s a great choice for most amateur drama societies.

I’ve also been co-writing a football blog with my husband, Ben Taylorson, who is currently trying to visit all of the 92 football league grounds in the country. It’s been great fun visiting some places that aren’t usually tourist destinations, and some of our favourite places have been towns that we probably wouldn’t have even considered visiting if it hadn’t been for football – Stockport, Morecambe and Barrow in Furness have been some of our favourites so far. To find out more, please visit our blog, 376 miles. (which coincidentally is the distance from Middlesbrough to Plymouth, the most distant of the league grounds we currently have to visit – as long as Yeovil don’t get promoted any time soon!)

As soon as ‘Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm’ is published I’ll be getting back to the hard work of writing book three (working title ‘Wild Flowers at Elder Fell Farm’) which might involve a wedding!

Isn’t she nice?

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I’m facing a bit of a dilemma.

I’m not very good at writing about nice characters.

pretty-woman-in-field-820477__340

Nice.

I tried. I tried really hard to make Alice, the heroine of “The Manor on the Moors”, a thoroughly nice person, her one flaw being an ever-so-slight (but utterly endearing) lack of confidence. She would develop confidence in spectacular style throughout the book to make her, by the end, practically perfect.  And then along came Caroline. She was meant to be the opposite of Alice’s niceness, throwing just what a lovely person Alice was into stark relief. She was meant to be mean, domineering and constantly cross to make Alice seem utterly lovely.

But the problem I found was – if your characters begin the book being thoroughly nice (or nasty) where have they got to go? If your main character is already beloved by all, pretty, intelligent and sweet, how can she grow?

Authors often say that when writing the characters take over, and this is what I allowed to happen. Flawed characters are much more interesting to write about than well rounded, happy characters, so Alice’s lack of confidence grew to be not just a tiny little flaw in her all-round general niceness, but a crippling problem that was going to ruin her life if she didn’t deal with it. I found I warmed to Caroline because of her awkwardness. I had to explain it, develop it and then show that there was more to her than a grumpy middle-aged woman constantly trying to tell other people what to do, but I couldn’t stop her being awkward. And I couldn’t stop her trying to take over ever scene she entered.

nice woman

Utterly lovely.

Instead of Caroline’s attitude making Alice seem more attractive by comparison, Caroline’s sometimes harsh judgement rang a bell of truth. When Caroline wonders ‘if it was legal to shake a visiting PhD student into some semblance of common sense and  [she] concluded that probably it wasn’t …’ I couldn’t help but sympathise with Caroline’s judgement. Alice’s niceness was diminished by Caroline’s attitude to her.

I ended up with two very different heroines with very different issues – but neither of them was practically perfect, or even close to it.

And there’s the dilemma. Because, especially in the genre of cupcakes and cafes that my books inhabit, readers in general warm to a sympathetic main character with whom they can empathise, not a flawed one who can be (let’s be honest about this) a bit irritating at times. I’m no longer even sure whether I’m capable of creating someone nice enough to carry the weight of genre expectations – and crucially, I’m not sure if I want to.

nice woman 2

Practically perfect

 

The Manor on the Moors is now available in both e-book and paperback form here if you want to read about two not entirely lovely ladies …

Nothing to report

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It’s all been a bit quiet. That’s the problem with writing a winter themed book, once winter is over, there isn’t much call for books about winter. And spring is definitely here now. I even saw a daffodil in the garden today!

So, what have I been up to? Well, lots of research and writing of book number two, currently with the working title of “The manor on the moors” which I am now editing frantically. It features a crumbling stately home, a family in decline and a nervous PhD student with a thing for a long-dead artist – “the bad boy of the arts and crafts movement”.

Starting soon, I’m going to be blogging a bit more about places that inspire me. Places are usually the starting points for any story, even before the people who inhabit them. I find a place and think “what kind of person might live here”? and that’s where my stories begin.

 

I’m going to start with considering the inspiration provided by a recent trip to Walt Disney World, Florida although I will not be using that directly in any of my novels – I suspect the mouse would sue me. it was, however, like walking into a storybook for real! And if you’re wondering about the giant cinammon loaf I’m eating in the photograph – yes, that was at Disney World and no, I didn’t manage to finish it …

This week’s mistakes

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Anne of Green Gables was one of my favourite books as a child. One of the things I have always remembered Anne Shirley saying was:

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

 

It’s been my writing mantra for a while now. Each day can be both literally as well as metaphorically a blank page, which is good, as every day I find a few new mistakes to make. anne of gg

So, these are the mistakes I have made this week!

  1. I called one of my characters Ellie. I always confuse the names Ellie and Evie (my daughter has friends called both and I can never remember which is which!) Half way through Chapter 6 Ellie went out of a room, and in Chapter 7 she came back in called Evie. That one was easy to solve – I changed both Ellie and Evie into Emma, which for some reason is much easier to remember!
  2. Chapter 13 was just a big mistake from beginning to end. I started it, hated it, deleted it all and started again. I needed a character to show up who had no reason to be in the scene at all, I came up with reason after reason for him to visit, none of them plausible. I was tearing my hair out. I went to bed, woke up the next morning, and realised that if I had him call the heroine’s mobile it meant he didn’t have to be there at all but could still have the conversation. Problem solved (and it’s a good job I’m not writing a historical).
  3. Biggest mistake of all? Apparently it was National Writing Day today and I’d never even imagined there was such a thing. I should have done something to celebrate – some writing, perhaps!