A change of focus

The scarlet handset appeared to have spewed a map of South Africa, matching stain spreading and disappearing beneath the sprawled body of the dark-haired woman.

‘What’s that godawful noise?’  

DS John Pettinger, concentrating on fixing first impressions in his mind, didn’t hesitate.   ‘Bad Company.’

‘Well obviously that’s  what she’s been keeping... oh, you mean the music.   Looks like some film I saw once, where the telephone  sucks the blood from its victims ...’

‘I doubt that’s happened here.’

Pettinger’s exasperation at the DC was muted as he failed to divert the sick feeling permeating his gut.   

‘I know this woman.’

[This has been posted in Phil Ambler's Prediction in response to the prompts telephone, sucks and company and is possibly, possibly the start of a new serial.   Certainly it continues from a tale written in response to this year's House of Writers, and a follow-up episode which was posted on MuDSpots #48, under the title 'Interrogation'.]

Orcrime festival 2012

Just returned from our second visit to Orkney this year, this time staying in Kirkwall to go to the first  Orcrime festival.   I didn't get to 'Bloody Scotland' (we were on our way to Orkney for an earlier holiday) so finding out about this was an unexpected treat.

And treat it was - Ann Cleeves, whose Shetland novels I'd read three of, before moving on to the Vera Stanhope novels - The Glass Room being especially interesting and useful to me dealing as it does with a writer's conference -  Lin Anderson, who I'd only discovered after booking tickets but had found the fast pace of her Rhona MacLeod, forensic scientist, novels unputdownable, and Denise Mina whose 'Garnethill' I bought in February and was so astonished and admiring of I subsequently went and bought the rest in the Maureen O'Donnell series and the first of the Paddy Meehan and Alex Morrow books too.

All were vivid and entertaining speakers, all gave insights into their writing processes and all said that they did not plot ther novels so much as let their characters dictate direction.
My husband admitted that I am not the only one to 'do it wrong.'

The blacksmith's wife [part 41] (prompts: hip, owl, burst)

Now-completed story can be accessed from the tab at the top of this blog

Writing - small pleasure

I'm currently re-reading all chapters so far completed for 'Making good', the follow-up to 'Damage limitation' and effectively the fourth in the series.   Chapter 30 I'd recently struggled with, needing to add a section dealing with an argument between two relatively minor characters.   I did this last Sunday and returned to it today, beginning to read with some trepidation, not sure how effective it had been.

So it was with real pleasure that I read a couple of paragraphs I'd forgotten writing but which fitted in perfectly, with links to other characters and events!   It's reached almost 110K - I don't know how it will end but know I need at least another five thousand words to make it a decent-size read.

Heading from Kirkwall (St. Magnus cathedral just visible) to Westray - just before the hail-storm which (luckly) was the only weather which fell on us during the trip - but it was bloody cold!

While there I made some note which were turned into a Six Sentences post:
Westray wildlife reactions to a backfiring B33

On the Earl Sigurd it apparently requires half a dozen orange boiler-suited crewmen to make the bike secure - two straps and two chocks - for the ninety minute inter-island crossing from Kirkwall to Rapness;  not rough but had we stayed outside the hail would have been painful.

Westray – population six hundred – typical Orcadian landscape; gently undulating skyline, rough-squared in yellow and green, smudged clouds around the edges of a gigantic sky from which showers fell all around but not once on us, all day.

Several long straights from ten-mile end to end, more dog-legs heading sideways to the farmsteads on the edges – it’s easy to assume the view must compensate for the hard work, but is that really so?

Morse code dotted woollen messages were strung along the wire at the edges of the fields and I wondered what they might say about our at times very noisy progress.   Wondered whether the lurching panic of the lapwings would have made the headlines, or did the fat kisses of the sixty or so sky-sweeping starlings make the louder claim?   Would the cattle, fudge-coloured and agitated, lumbering wild-eyed to their feet, have the wit to pass the word along, and was it really the black-stockinged sheep with dirty bums who had the final, censoring word?

Monday sunrise in Stromness

Prediction prompt : 'post', 'shield' and 'immoral'

A forge-like image created for 100 Orkney Days of Summer and this week's post on Phil Ambler's 'Friday Prediction'

The blacksmith's wife [part 34]

Gabriel’s ever-fluctuating sense of filiality returned him to accusative.

‘Your callous immorality shocks me,’ he complained, days after he’d willingly posted his limp and green-shit-leaking brother through the side-slats of the dead-dog cart while I shielded him by offering soup to its malodorous driver.

My own concerns were several:   I was with child to a man I’d wed most willingly but now wondered if I should have second thoughts; the Earl was like to demand both letters and retribution for my alleged releasing of Mathias, and now approaching with a needing-shod stallion was the speedwell-eyed youth I’d once lain with.

The blacksmith's wife [part 33]

Post his immoral interlude with the tavern-doxy, how would Gabriel now view my past philanderings?   Given that he’d also seen me taken by his brother, he surely couldn’t now complain?

The boy was beautiful, which was why I’d wanted him.  Finger to my lips I directed him to the meadow behind the forge, trusting that the meadowsweet would shield us.  

Led the horse to Gabriel, smiled sweet and said ‘No hurry.’

But I was mistook to think that all was fair, that because there was no danger of foisting onto Gabriel a bastard brat, he would not mind.

He did.

Season of more than mists!

Yes the windows are fogged with condensation, and now the heating - set at a lowly 65ºC - has come on.   And it's still August.

101 Fiction: Forge

A more polished first episode of 'The blacksmith's wife' has been accepted by John Xero for his 101 Fiction.   Little did I know when I began that I'd  be about to wrestle with 'ration', flatter' and 'squid' from which to wrench episode 32 this week ...

101 Fiction: Forge: by Sandra Davies Caged by guilt and shadowed bars of branding irons, breasts and belly besmirched by centuries of soot from the roof-supp...

Halfway through, already

It was a surprise to learn that already fifty of the 100 days of summer have passed (although around fifteen were a bit of a cheat for me, using only pre-done inages).
Today I have a short account of my favourite so far (re-posted here), what I was hoping for from the exercise and how I think it's gone.

Hypochondria

The words for Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction this week are vaccine, ground and address and since vaccine wasn't invented until a century after the time of the blacksmith's wife, I had to abandon them this week.
Herewith my alternative:

Hypochondria

‘Vaccine?  Don’t be ridiculous!’

Contempt in every angle of her sprawled limbs, the flare of her nostrils and her lightly-raised eyebrows, the depth of her slutty depravity further exaggerated by the slatted shadows which striped both her and the screwed-up sheets.   Another half-hour and there’d be sufficient light to turn this chiaroscuro soft-ground etching to something more common-place.   For the moment he was both mesmerised and horrified as was apparent from the higher-than-usual pitch of his voice, addressing her from where he stood naked by the sink.

‘I’ve run cold water on it’ he said plaintively, ‘and it still stings.’

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29] - runner up for last week!

Written (I think) in Pueblo, or maybe Fort Collins, Colarado, this was declared a runner up by Phil Ambler over at his Prediction page today - thank you for that,  Phil! - but less so for next week's words which are vaccine, ground and address 

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29]

Fearing malevolence, and assuming I could thwart it, the earl insisted on my presence at the birth.

His lady gave no flicker of acknowledgement, too sharp-speared with labour pain, the like of which, before winter, would be mine to suffer too, but I trusted my son would not appear so goblin-like as this wizened little red-haired gnome, the image of its father.  

Having been three days away I hastened home, to find Gabriel speared between the goblin-gnarled, lard-flickered thighs of the tavern-keeper’s wife, but could not judge who screamed loudest from the bucketful of still-hot cinders I emptied over them.

>Language>Place blog carnival #17

Now live - and put together in Alaska - check it out for some wonderfully inspiring posts

101 Fiction: Traditional

101 Fiction: Traditional: by Sandra Davies Rise before May dawn, middle of meadow, wash face in dew. Surrender all common sense:  next man met so stunned by my b...

Not idle

Just because I've not been posting here much does not mean I've discovered the joys of housework ...

As well as daily pieces on Thinking Ten - some of which are episodes of  'Just cause' which has reached 10,000 words - and weekly episodes of 'The blacksmith's wife' (2,500+ words) - I have sent my final, fifty-first, piece off to MuDSpots (I think I've only missed one prompt in the year) and am just embarked on a daily post for 100 days of summer.   This is imagery rather than writing, based on Orkney, and I am using the opportunity to revisit both photography and art work and ally it to the poetry of George Mackay Brown, long a favourite of mine but recently neglected.

'Not wanted on Voyage' is currently on the back boiler, awaiting a major re-write - I'm deliberately 'resting' it so as to come to it afresh and have several ideas to move it forward - and the as yet untitled follow-up (filed as 'Susannah') stands at  49,000.

What I am working on, and have been since the last week of June, is 'Moving on', the follow up to 'Damage limitation'.   I've added some 18,000 words and have ideas for more.   Still only halfway at 56,000 words.

What I am not likely to be doing this year is NaNoWriMo - I really do not want to start another novel!

Oh - and I am off to Kansas in just over a week for a third gathering of folk from Six Sentences.

Inspiration

For me, in a word, Orkney.

Initially, and ever after always, for its horizons - a sufficiency of which are sea edged - and for the ever-varying sky above the smooth-edged hills

History too, stone and hoarded, driftwood wood, mysterious and eminently practical - and totally unignorable.

These abandoned creel stones gave rise to three years' work, as did the standing stones at Brodgar, allied to the poetry of George Mackay Brown.

John W. Hedges wrote about the ancient family folk who'd once inhabited Isbister.

He, and the place itself, inspired me to write 'Edge' and illustrate it with work sprung from other Orcadian sources.

This image combines plate and print and photograph, to suggest standing stones and sea and unfathomable horizon.







And this print, one of a series exploring inner stone age cells of Skara Brae, Gurness and Rendall, references the inner chambers of Maeshowe, one of Orkney's many Neolithic tombs.

Maeshowe's walls are overlaid with Viking graffiti, here I've used dying sea-pinks from the windowsill of a Stromness cottage, where we'll be again come September.

This has been accepted for Language>Place Blog Carnival #17 whose topic is Inspiration.  Other posts can be read via this link

What is an editor for?

By which I mean what are their core responsibilities?

I ask because I assumed that ensuring correct use of English (inconsistencies of spelling and matching tenses for example) was a given.

And although I would hesitate to claim that they ‘ought’ to impose a minimum level of ‘good’ writing – for example, by suggesting that sentences flow smoothly or that switching to third from first person and back again in a single paragraph was eradicated – I can see that some might be reluctant to impose (put the work in??)

For a novel I would hope that a nod towards veracity was deemed essential, along with an ironing out of any jerky illogicalities which confound the plot, even if only to uphold their own status in supporting the premise that writer is one worth promoting.

So when I read a book by a writer who highly praises her editor and has seven published books (and a contract for more) and I find it barely readable because of what I deem is its poor writing, is that because I’m picky, or that the editor has failed to do her job?

And further undermining my certainty are the tributes from two non-red top newspapers, and the fact that a friend and librarian said that the writer ‘wasn’t bad’, that she had two of her and had looked to buy a third - even given that reading is subjective, surely there’s a bottom line beyond which one would suppose any competent editor would not sink?

The blacksmith’s wife [part 24]

‘Bewitching?  Is that something you can do?’

‘If necessary, aye, but it’s a skill I rarely use … my mother said it’d more likely end in death than in a pension, given Hopkin's witch-burnings in Bury.’

‘And did you use such tricks on me?’

‘Nay,’ I smiled. ‘T’was never needed, the honey of my body was sufficient tacky for you to stay adhered …’

‘As it was for others, among whom was my brother.   Despite all, I cannot forget he shares my blood …’

‘And lets it too!’

‘Enough.   Time to re-build and ensure you’re kept from vengeful harm.’ 

[Despite the difficult words this week, this one sprung into being almost unaided, except for the need to check facts about witch-burning in Bury St. Edmunds, which took place in 1645, when 120 women were brought to trial]

Memories, one step on

I remember sitting on my Grandad’s lap watching my two-years-younger brother take his first steps, backlit at the end of the hall by the light from the small window beside the front door.

So small an area, that hall, so strongly influential, so readily recollected, it was papered halfway up with bumpy brown and shiny anaglypta.

Above was cream and hung with English hunting prints,  the startling scarlet of their coats buried deep in my subconscious, arc-ing resonance when, half a century later, I discovered in Oxford’s Ashmolean museum Uccello’s ‘Hunt at Night’  

Although the truly horrid under-stairs pale blue china bunny is now gone, a bought-for-sentimental-reason, small brown version lives in a cupboard in my bedroom and will not allow itself to be discarded

The circular barometer, mystic numbers and gold shiny arrow-headed needle a source of fascination, and tapped daily by my Grandad, now hangs in my sitting room:  I still seek understanding.

And just this year, the long-forgotten hallstand, near-black wood, brass hooks and small square mirror, green lily-patterned tiles and tin tray for umbrellas, reappeared in the entrance hall of Luke Darbyshere (my fictional detective)’s flat.

This was a resppnse to a challenge set by Bill Lapham on Six Sentences:  having asked for six sentences beginning 'I remember' we were to select just one and write five more from that, using our imagination.   This didn't quite stick to the rules but is an illustration of how such 'I remember' moments are re-used  in our writings.

The blacksmiths wife [part 23]

Despite three  truly difficult words thrown up by Phil Ambler's book - tacky, pension and bewitch -  I managed to continue this serial:

‘For all he’s a one-legged, pensioned-off foot-soldier, the Constable knew what best to do, organised a line of buckets to the pump.   It’s better than it looks.’

Gabriel had been relieved to see me, I at his survival.   Brick fireplace and chimney were undamaged, the rest a blackened lath-and-plaster-tacky, straw-strewn mess.

‘Your tools?’

‘Mostly salvaged.’

‘Mathias?’

‘Taken.   This’ (he gestured) ‘revenge for what they saw as sanctuary.’

‘They?’

‘Impossible to know.   The message?’

‘Not delivered.’

‘Then his life is forfeit.’

‘As mine when, finding letters missing, they return for me.’

‘He’ll likely claim bewitchment.’

‘Then I must make it so.’