Diary
This diary works the other way from most - newest entries are at the bottom. I have deleted many old entries, so it starts rather abruptly. Forgive the odd layout at times - I can't keep up with the changes to the website system. Just as I worked out how to add pictures, the goalposts did a little dance and I can no longer manage it. What an admission!
8th August 2009
Just home from a short week on the local canal, with my sister, her daughter and both our grandsons. The weather was mostly fine, and the scenery utterly glorious from start to finish. The small boys, aged 9 and 5, got along pretty well, and endured the long slow parts fairly stoically. Luke and I are keen to do it again as soon as we can. The others are not so sure...
Margery of Quether is now printed and ready to go. I'm very pleased with it, especially the front cover, boasting a picture I took, which is the ghost walk at Baring-Gould's family home.
The Cotswold books are turning up in more and more places this year. I just heard of someone finding one in a hotel library on the Canary Islands.
30th August 2009
The good news is that A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS has moved a step closer to fruition, with the hardback provisionally scheduled for next summer. Nothing yet begun on number 9 in the series, but I think I've selected the setting for it.
Despite pretty grim weather, the garden is looking its best ever. The bamboo has finally decided to grow, and the many trees and shrubs that I planted eight or nine years ago are all flourishing. The 'folly' that I'm making out of lovely twisty dead ivy branches is quite dramatic (there might even be a photo of it one of these days...)
The Launch of the next hardback - FEAR IN THE COTSWOLDS - is attracting a lot of interest. 26th November, in Waterstone's Gloucester. If anyone would like an invitation, just email me. The more the merrier.
And the Baring-Gould biography is entering its final stages. I'm sending out the proposal package this week - at last! After five years, I love him more than ever, and will really miss the project when it's finally completed.
20th September 2009
Currently revising A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS, which is set in Broad Campden. I think the setting for the 9th in the series will be Cranham, with some action in Painswick. Drew will be in that one, as well.. I've been trying to clear out a large quantity of extraneous paper and other rubbish from my study, with a major journey to the tip scheduled for this week. What does one do with old computers, which still have a lot of old stories, letters, emails, etc on the hard drive??
18th October 2009
Just home from a fabulous three-week trip to Syria. I was with my old schoolfriend Liz, and we visited Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra and Hama, as well as several side trips to ancient sites. High spots were the astonishing Roman amphitheatre at Bosra, the Simeon Stylites church near Aleppo and the addictive souks in Damascus and Aleppo, full of colour and smells and cheerful shoppers. Vendors in Syria do not hassle tourists the way they do in India, Egypt and Morocco, to name but a few.
On my birthday, we stayed at the famous Baron Hotel in Aleppo, which was magically romantic. We stayed in Room 203, where Agatha Christie wrote the early part of 'Murder on the Orient Express'. 
28th October 2009
Just noticed the rude reviews of 'Blood in the Cotswolds' on Amazon, referring to my depiction of an obese person. I can understand that the thoughts Phil Hollis entertains are insensitive - but they're what a great many people do think. It's a dilemma, isn't it - how realistic do we dare to be, when it comes to political correctness and 'inclusivity'? It seems to me that a writer does have a duty to reflect authentic views, and even tread on a few toes now and then. Taboos have to be challenged now and then. Luckily for me, the Amazon ranking for 'Blood...' is pretty high. Read it for yourselves and see what you think! Meanwhile 'Fear in the Cotswolds' will be out any day now, in hardback, and I am delivering the revised version of 'A Grave in the Cotswolds' to the publisher tomorrow. One is set in Hampnett, and the other in Broad Campden. Next in line will see Thea in a big beautiful Cotswolds manor in Cranham.
22nd November 2009
3rd January 2010
Happy New Year to all my readers! The arctic weather continues, and the strategies for obtaining feed for the sheep become more Byzantine. The road outside my house is like a glacier, so driving is not recommended.
Nice things are happening, as well. All the neighbours are helping each other, and listening to each other's stories of skids and slips and narrow misses. The comparison seems to be with 1962/3, when the freeze lasted for six weeks or more.
But the writing still proceeds well, and DECEPTION IN THE COTSWOLDS is now a third of the way along, with Thea finding herself confronting the realities of assisted suicide and the legal implications.
10th January 2010
At some point last autumn, I woke up one day no longer persuaded by people like Al Gore and Franny Armstrong who threaten utter disaster because 'we'll all fry' thanks to global warming. Suddenly it felt like another in a long line of collective hysterias that society does so well. I spoke to many friends about it, and all but one had recently arrived at much the same conclusion. In fact, it feels as if the whole thing is a nonsense, with several environmentalists producing books that demonstrate how bad the 'science' is. Most of it is computer modelling, which is notoriously useless at making predictions.
'The Deniers' by Lawrence Solomon is one of these books which take a good hard look at 'the science' of climate change. Amazon is out of stock, which must be significant.
Since my change of heart, there has been the Essex email scandal - and a month of the most severe snow and ice in Britain since 1963.
Meanwhile, I am struggling to keep my animals alive, carrying heavy buckets of water to them, slipping and sliding down the most icy road I've ever driven on - and back again. Friends and family are overflowing with dramatic stories. Children haven't been to school for weeks, nobody's going to work, or to the shops, and long snowed-in days can be very boring. It's all much worse than the white-out I describe in FEAR IN THE COTSWOLDS, which I wrote at the end of 2008, when there was no snow in sight.
10th February 2010
I'm very pleased with the progress I've made on DECEPTION IN THE COTSWOLDS, through this long cold winter. There has been rather a Groundhog Day feel to life since the New Year, with so little happening, and much more routine than I would like. But at least it has been quite productive. I've made one or two more of my popular knitted throws as well.
There has been a big increase in the number of emails I've received from readers, which is really gratifying. It adds a very important dimension to the whole process of writing, and is very much appreciated. I have always had a rather hazy idea of my readership - I never have an image of 'a typical reader' as I write - but now I know some of you as real individuals, and that's lovely.
Still following the climate change debate avidly, and very pleased to find a lot more common sense emerging. To summarise my position today (and it will doubtless change again soon): I think we burn too much fossil fuel, and waste far too much of everything - food, especially - and there are probably too many of us. But I think it makes far better sense to adapt to change rather than devote huge amounts of money and effort to averting a future we can't know for sure will happen. We need to be very much humbler about what we can and cannot predict.
The coming month or two has numerous bookings to sign copies of the novels, all over the Cotswold region. I just hope it doesn't snow again!
25th February 2010
Just got to the final page of DECEPTION IN THE COTSWOLDS. It does need some tidying up, but essentially it's done. Always a great feeling.
It also seems safe (almost) to say that the worst of the winter weather is over. I planted 4 apple trees today, while mulling over the final twist of the novel.
Still a lot of really lovely emails coming from readers. It is so encouraging. Thank you, everybody.
And I'm still having trouble putting pictures on here. As fast as I solve one problem another one appears.
16th March 2010
Despite the sunshine, it's still cold, with almost no spring flowers to be seen. Very confusing for us all. The sheep are lambing this week, in theory. So far one little ewe lamb, called Dora, has arrived. I give them all names, and then forget who is which.
Exciting book news is that my publisher has decided to reissue three of my earlier titles. GRAVE CONCERNS, which was my fourth novel, in which Drew Slocombe sets up as an alternative undertaker; THE STING OF DEATH which has a large cast and multiple viewpoints and is essentially about failures in the mother/child relationship. I'm revising it slightly, having found a few embarrassing inconsistencies where a person is in two places at once. Finally A MARKET FOR MURDER, which was very popular when it first appeared, with people searching for copies in vain in recent years. All three will be paperbacks, due early next year.
Requests for signings and talks are still coming in. I'm looking forward to visiting Winchcombe for the first time ever on Easter Saturday
April 2nd 2010
Good Friday and it's raining, as so often seems to happen. Yesterday the road outside was running like a river after an afternoon of heavy rain.
The CWA Conference is a week away. I keep finding careless mistakes in my preparations, and am sure to have forgotten something crucial, but at least the trains will be running.
I seem to have been submerged in revising, checking, correcting various books, old and new, for months now. It makes a refreshing change from original creation, and I sometimes think I am a born proofreader beyond all else, but I'm starting to get itchy to write something new.
Sales of the Cotswolds series are increasing quite breathtakingly - thank you, everybody!
The book signings proceed unabated. Some are much better than others. In Hereford, four of us showed up at Waterstones one morning, and sold something like 10 books between us. This was not good by any standards. 'Oh well,' sighed one friend, 'nobody in Hereford reads books.' I hope this isn't true, because I'm trying to arrange an event in the Oxfam Bookshop there on 3rd July.
17th April 2010
A week since the CWA Conference, and two days since I handed over all the Membership Secretary material, so life feels somewhat slower now. But there is a lot to do in the garden, the Baring-Gould biography is desperate for attention, and politics is a growing passion. I have come down heavily in favour of the LibDems in recent months, and want to create banners and T-shirts saying MAKE A LEAP OF FAITH - VOTE LIBDEM. I think they combine common sense with a solid dose of liberalism, all of which offers a great deal. And wouldn't it be wonderful to have something really fresh and hopeful again. Something that doesn't echo the betrayal of Labour or the terrible risks attached to the Tories. Sorry - I probably shouldn't bring politics in, but I couldn't resist.
The Great Volcano Crisis is possibly going to be a far larger pivotal moment in European history than this general election, and I have to admit to enjoying it enormously.
Book signings continue every two or three weeks, with extremely varied results. Winchcombe was the best of all in this latest batch.
3rd May 2010
My weekend was rather mixed. After the great ego-boost of the Conference, with a sense of my brain working at full tilt and nothing I couldn't tackle, etc - the Banbury Waterstones book signing was a major humiliation. The idea of 'cold selling' was unnerving from the start, but I assumed they had a formula to make it work, and the staff would support me in some way. No - I was left with a pile of books, no chair, and told to 'wander around the shop talking to people' and trying to sell the books. I went into paralysis, and just stood there, trying in vain to catch people's eye. I sold 2 - one to a woman in a wheelchair who couldn't escape. The other I have an awful feeling was never actually paid for. She might have thought it was a free gift. Plus a third to my dear friend and fellow author Adrian Magson, who came to offer solidarity. After an hour of sore feet and plummeting self-esteem, I rather crossly told them I was going. The manager put in a belated appearance and told me they had an author who sold 40 books that way, implying (quite rightly) that I was useless. People avoided my eye and if I forced myself on them, were far from happy. I have an awful feeling I put off more than I attracted, doing myself no good at all.
I can't blame the shop - the way they operate just doesn't properly lend itself to such events, as far as I can see, despite the amazing man who managed 40 sales. The smaller independent bookshops have resulted in excellent sales, because they direct customers my way, talk about the books, show real enthusiasm and engagement. Nothing remotely like that happens in Waterstones. It simply isn't their kind of style.
So I crept home to get on with revising and checking no fewer than three forthcoming books. 'Grave Concerns' was on my computer in unedited form, so I've gone through line by line changing it to be identical to the published version from 2000. Funny how things have changed - mobile phones were still expensive and far from ubiquitous then. This is, I think, one of my very favourites out of all my books. It's longer than the others, funny, and very individual. I feel extremely proud of it.
6th June 2010
The demands of the smallholding are very pressing these days. Not just the sheep shearing, which never seems to get any less traumatic as we wait for the man to turn up, but I'm also very distracted by a new fence I decided would be nice to smarten the place up. There have been several weeks in which promises have been made and broken, and the materials are still lying around waiting for somebody to drive the posts into the ground and erect two new gates. Writing seems to be on hold until all this is settled.
I've had reason to mull over Thea Osborne's character recently, in the light of various comments. She is undeniably unkind to poor Phil when he hurts his back in 'Blood in the Cotswolds' and she is reckless and close to stupid when she lets the dogs escape in 'Slaughter in the Cotswolds' causing people to protest that they find her annoying. Thinking back, much of this came as a response to complaints that she was a bit too saccharine in the earlier titles. So I decided she should have some character flaws. I still think that a perfect person is even more annoying than one with a few defects. In 'Fear in the Cotswolds' she is nicer, I hope, when she experiences quite a loss of confidence. And in 'A Grave in the Cotswolds' she manages not to upset anybody too badly. However, she can be tactless and insensitive, and she's never going to do everything she's told to by the people she's house-sitting for!
As for Phil Hollis, he too arouses controversy. Some readers find him annoying and rather limited, while others think him a good man, who Thea is lucky to have.
I look forward to reactions to Drew Slocombe, when he makes a reappearance after a long break, in 'A Grave in the Cotswolds'.
21st June 2010
A busy month, doing everything but writing. My nephew's wedding was on the 5th, which presented a second opportunity for a large family gathering within a month. The first was my mother's 90th birthday in May. Next came a succession of visitors and visits. I think I've had enough conversation to last the rest of the summer! The visits were all highly enjoyable - a trip to Cheshire to find a venue for the October Baring-Gould gathering; then a drive to Hertfordshire, where Buntingford Library laid on the most spectacular setting for a talk about my books. The audience was animated, interested and responsive - one of the very best ever. Finally, two days ago there was a 'celebration' of the 100th anniversary of Okehampton Grammar School, which I attended. My sister had heard about it almost accidentally, and sent a blanket email via Friends Reunited to literally thousands of former pupils to tell them about it. Unfortunately, the school itself made virtually no effort at all to publicise the event, or to make it anything but a pathetic 'fete' with four or five stalls, and a room where old school photos were laid out for inspection. About thirty or forty people turned up, the majority of them from the period when my sister and I were at school, and it was a delight to chat to them. But it was extremely sad that a much bigger and better effort had not been made. Radio 4 has a series on at present called 'Slapdash Britain'. This non-event certainly qualifies for that label. My grandson's pre-school nursery manages a vastly better show than that each summer. The impression left by what is now called Okehampton College was positively shameful.
My friend Paula Brackston is shortlisted for the Mind Book Award this year, with the announcement of the winner coming on July 8th. This is extremely exciting, and very well deserved. The book is 'Nutters' and she has written it under the name of P.J.Davy.
The next event is launch signing of the new hardback 'A Grave in the Cotswolds' on 28th August. We're hoping to make quite a party of it. The paperback of 'Fear in the Cotswolds' will be available at the same time.
Finally, I must mention the wonderful emails I have been receiving from readers in America recently. American readers are so frank, so thoughtful, so generous, I feel thoroughly humbled by the lovely things they say.
July 16th 2010
After some weeks of decent weather, we're into dreadful gales and sudden downpours. And it's almost cold enough to need socks. The poor garden is looking very bedraggled.
I'm approaching the end of my biography of Sabine Baring-Gould, after seven years working on it. There will be months of checking elusive facts and visiting one or two of the more remote archives, and still there will be gaps, but essentially the life story is now captured on paper. I still love and admire him, which must say something about the man and the project.
At the same time, I'm having a lot of ideas for Malice in the Cotswolds and am actually doing a bit more planning than usual, before I actually get started on it. People are going to behave very badly, and Thea's basic faith in human nature is going to take some knocks.
The school holidays will see me taking my entire family off to a self-catering break in a large house in Suffolk. Eleven of us, at the last count. Plus an experimental camping trip on Dartmoor with grandson Luke.
July 17th 2010
Life follows art. In Fear in the Cotswolds Thea has to take care of some orphaned baby animals, with all the paraphernalia that involves. Last night, my cat brought in a tiny baby bird, just fledged but definitely unable to fend for itself. I put it in a little nest of wool for the night and expected to find it dead this morning.
Far from it - the little thing was cheeping desperately for food when I went downstairs at 8.00am. Having searched for 'feeding baby birds' on Google, I discovered that maggots or tinned cat meat were required. A couple of weeks ago, I had plenty of maggots (a whole other story) but I could not immediately locate any, so cat food it was. Ironic, in a way, that the cat who would have eaten the bird was now providing its sustenance. Anyway, I then remembered that some of the Jacob fleece I was given recently had a lot of moth caterpillars in it. I had dumped it on my patio, hoping birds would clean it for me. It turns out there are dozens of tasty morsels still there. My baby bird eats them voraciously, at a rate of 3 or 4 every 45 minutes. It's such a simple pleasure to see it eating so eagerly, and then doing proper little poos afterwards. Feeding any baby creature is a basic satisfaction like no other. It makes me think about life at its fundamental level, the way this tiny scrap is so keen to live. I hope I can release it into the garden in a week or so. It's probably a blue tit, but could be a robin or sparrow. It might yet die. I will probably have to take it with me when I go away for a night this week. I'll have to buy maggots. Makes a change from writing books!!