Monthly Archives: July 2009

Ten free books and free first chapter featuring Pickles the dog

As you might know if you’ve been reading this blog, Leonard is a man who appreciates a good slow pint and a nice fragrant tomato plant. He is living happily as a widowed gardener when he finds something mysterious in one of his wife’s old handbags. Then his whole life starts to unravel…

Here’s a link to the entire first chapter of my new novel, The Blue Handbag, which follows Leonard as he becomes a reluctant detective. The book is available now but officially out on Monday. Or just skip reading the first chapter and buy the book – you already know it’s going to be the perfect summer read ; ) Here it is on Amazon UK, or it’s only £5.49 ($9) at The Book Depository including free worldwide delivery. Change the currency at the top right hand corner.

I’m also giving away ten of my books. To qualify for the draw, all you have to do is write a short review of The Blue Handbag and post it online before the end of September. It doesn’t need to be long – a sentence will be fine. Post it anywhere – Amazon, Goodreads, or your blog if you have one, and then email me the link. If you win you can choose from any of my books, including my next novel Thaw before it comes out, and the competition is open to everyone regardless of where you live. If you’ve already written a review that counts too!

And don’t forget the offer of fifteen minutes of fame. As you know I’m interviewing 100 people who’ve read one of ten pass-it-on copies of The Blue Handbag at 100 Readers, and I’m also doing mini-interviews with other readers (the latest is with Donna Safford, here). If you’d like to do a mini-interview, drop me an email when you’ve finished the book.

That WAS a link-heavy post. I’ll go back to talking about slugs and Fiat 500s next week.

Have fabulous weekends x

When You’re Falling, Dive

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I finished this book yesterday. It’s a collection of fable-like stories from the author’s life – his own or others, including Joan Didion, Isabel Allende, Eckhard Tolle and others.

It asks why ‘some people blossom in advertisy while others fall apart’, and several themes run through the book – spirituality, buddhist ideas, ‘waking up’, transforming adversity and vulnerability into strengths.

The style of Matousek’s writing ocassionally grated on me, especially his under-use of the word ‘said’ and over-use of ‘explained’, ‘asserted’, ‘asked’ etc. (I wonder if someone made him take the ‘said’s out to make it more ‘interesting’).

Having said that, the stories speak for themselves. The book contains a great deal of wisdom, and it’s also very accessible and engaging – as stories (at their best) are. Definitely a good one for the bedside table. I’ll leave you with a random quote from the book.

Saint Augustine said that we can only know what we love. And to know something is to know it’s not yours. We’re guests in this hotel, after all; even the ashtrays will have to stay. Still, attachment is bound to happen. We imagine our live to be an accretion, an increase of layers solidifying the identity that holds us down to the ground. But what if the opposite’s even more true, that we’re winnowed away, worn down by time, pushed into transparency? What if we’re humbled, without being severed, in order that we may move through the world with less friction, less regret but more desire, less protection but more love?

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen…

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I wrote the poem at the bottom of this post many years ago. I wanted to speak about the delicious juicy more-ish buzz I felt when this friend was reading my work. I wanted more!

It reminds me of my younger brother at the swimming pool when we were little. He’d say ‘look at me! look at me!’ over and over until my mum gave him her attention, and then he’d do some kind of somersault or trick before repeating the whole process five minutes later.

I’m learning that when I seek this kind of attention out, I’m onto a loser. It isn’t fair to ask people to tell you you’re wonderful on demand. Even when they do, I can never get enough of it anyway. Buddhists speak of ‘hungry ghosts’ with tiny mouths and huge bellies. I never get a belly-full.

When I busy myself with living, and let praise come to me, I enjoy every mouthful, but it doesn’t leave me craving more. It feels ‘extra’, like Raymond Carver’s gravy.

The trick is knowing what to do instead of seeking praise, or any other kind of compulsive behaviour, when our bellies feels empty.

Sit with the emptiness. Give ourselves something nourishing, like a hot bath or a goats cheese and tomato sandwich. Be kind to ourselves. Be kind to someone else. We already have everything we need.

All of us

Last night a friend read
my poems
for the first time
and praised several before
picking up her magazine again.
I wanted her to read
everything I
had ever written.

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen.

Would you like your fifteen minutes of mini-fame? (and a mini-poem)

Getting published – The Holy Grail?

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Six years ago, I completed my first novel. Like most unpublished writers, I desperately wanted a publisher. I wanted my work to be read. I bought The Writer’s Handbook, sent off submissions, started a blog, and continued to write. Six years later, my first three novels were accepted for publication by Snowbooks. My debut, The Letters, was published earlier this year. Was it all I’d hoped for? Was being published my Holy Grail?

Continue reading the rest of this article at the marvellous Juxtabook, and thank you to Catherine for having me.

I was away at a music festival this weekend. I’d forgotten about the toilets, and the queues, and all the people. We did have a lovely time though, and I’ll write about it more later in the week. Until then…

Hello small slug

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Yesterday morning I washed a few small Desiree potatoes from the garden and left them out to dry. One of them had a narrow round bore-hole and I washed this out.

An hour later (when making a cup of tea) I saw a black blob on the skin of one of the potatoes. It was a slug, as fat as my thumbnail.

He must have been hiding in that hole. I’m glad he came out to say hello before I baked the potato and ate it. I didn’t squish him, but I didn’t feel quite kind enough to set him free in the garden. I put him in the bin – I’m sure he’ll be happy in there.

widget spotting – here it is at bits of sky, marijka’s world, creative resistance to survival, Naturally Green Blog, Wood among the trees… small stones are TAKING OVER THE WORLD! Ha ha ha… (evil laugh)

Have a lovely weekend x

hello small slug

That fine line between letting-people-know-about-my-books and being-bloody-annoying

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More than 1000 people entered a competition to win copies of The Blue Handbag over at Goodreads.

After the competition ended, I started sending these people friend requests, letting them know about my quarterly newsletter (which always has free articles and a competition to win free books) and this blog.

Yesterday this is the reply I got from one of these Goodreads members:

“So did you choose me to be a friend so you could market more books or because you really are choosing friends?”

Urk.

I do worry about becoming annoying, like that fine specimen of a salesman in the photo. Sometimes I think that if my novels were ‘good enough’, they’d sell themselves – I’d just have to sit back and watch the money rolling in and become a wealthy woman of mystery. Sometimes I feel like stopping all my blogs and expanding my vegetable patch instead, or never mentioning in conversation again that I’m a writer.

However.

Books do not sell themselves. My publishers Snowbooks do a fine job of getting them into the shops, but there they compete with thousands of better known authors, and as I’ve said before it feels like every book I sell is something of a miracle.

So I’ll keep blogging, and letting-people-know-about-my-books. Yes, because I would like to eventually make a living from my writing, but more importantly because I want to find people who will ENJOY my books, and equally importantly, I love to write. Books, blogs – it’s all good. It’s what I do. And if every so often I cross the line and become bloody annoying, well I’ll just have to be annoying.

PS This particular Goodreads member, once I’d written an honest answer, apologised if she’d sounded harsh and said she was still interested in reading my books. All’s well that ends well.

PPS BUY MY BOOKS! BUY MY BOOKS! Or I won’t invite you to my birthday party! ; )

A new interview is up at 100 Readers – meet Kath Glover and her lovely dog Wilma.

Sit here. Eat.

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The book I’m reading at the moment had this poem in it – I’ve read it before, but it was good to get re-acquainted.

I don’t have anything else exciting to say today. Happy Wednesdays.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the others welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott
(here’s a link to his Selected Poems)

Which fifteen labels would you use to describe yourself?

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I was reading the ‘labels’ section down on the right hand side of this blog this morning and chuckling about how well the list of words described me (or at least how I like to see myself).

An edited selection of the list: authenticity, bad jokes, being a writer, books, crazy person, disclipline, egogooglaholism, gratitude, growing things, letting go, ordinary things, paying attention, slowing down, yummy food, zen.

Come on then, what would your fifteen labels be? If you’ve got a list on your blog you can use that, and if not you can cheat!

There’s a particularly beautiful small stone at a handful of stones today, although of course they’re all beautiful. If you’d like them displayed on your own blog (like the one on the bottom right of Planting Words), just visit the widget-man.

If we’ne not already linked on Facebook, do come and say hello! I like it when people ask to be my friend…