A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Four: Charterers

Charterers who are still friends.

A yacht, however roomy, demands a certain amount of tolerance from people who are flung together in such a small space. It says a lot for the essential good nature of sailors that most of the people who chartered Simba were pleasant and interesting. The quartet of people on the left (that's me in the very middle with the gigantic sunglasses) became - and remained - friends, especially the couple on the right, Frank and Anne Mapes of Millport. If you've ever had the good fortune to visit the lovely little isle of Cumbrae, off the west coast of Scotland, and cycle round it, there's a fair chance that you'll have hired your bike from 'Mapes of Millport' - a wonderful cycle hire and old fashioned toy shop in the middle of the town. The couple on the left (with Barbara's head obscured by the boom) are their friends, potter Barbara Davidson and her husband Brian, of Larbert pottery fame.

They spent a fortnight aboard Simba and we divided the time between sightseeing on Tenerife, and sailing to La Palma and La Gomera. Sometimes they would eat out - often inviting us to join them - sometimes we would cater for them aboard the boat - with quite a lot of the cooking done by yours truly, a fact which still amazes me in retrospect. Of late, I've tended to subscribe to the Deborah Meaden school of catering. She once said on the television programme, Dragons Den, and much to the amazed disbelief of the other dragons, that she 'didn't cook.' And I thought, yes, I could live with that. But back then, I was young and energetic and didn't much mind catering. Or not in the Canaries with its abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables and wonderful seafood, anyway!

San Sebastian, La Gomera. The governor's tower, where Beatriz de Bobadilla lived, on the right. 

Two incidents helped to cement our friendship. The two couples had paid for a skippered, catered charter which meant that we were to sail wherever they wanted to go within reason and on the advice of the skipper who always has the last word, for reasons of safety. But a day or two before they arrived, we realized to our horror that the boat's account, which was meant to be topped up by the company in Scotland, hadn't received any money for a long time. Frantic phone calls ensued and money was promised. It didn't come. The reasons why were too complicated to go into here but it's always a hazard for yacht skippers working a long way from the parent company. The fact remained that we had four people arriving for a two week holiday, and we had nothing but the boat and - given that Alan wasn't exactly handsomely paid and I wasn't paid at all - a tiny amount of our own cash in the bank.

Panic.

Alan did the only thing possible, took Frank to one side, and explained the situation. To his eternal credit, Frank reassured us that it wasn't our fault, financed the whole thing, and said, 'Don't worry about it. I'll make sure I get my money when I get back to Scotland. And believe me, I'll make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen to you again.' He was as good as his word.

The second incident involved our first proper visit to the beautiful island of La Gomera, although Alan had sailed there before to top up with their excellent water. High on the hill above San Sebastian, the port and main town of La Gomera, you can just make out that there is a large statue standing on a hill. Alan's boss back in Scotland, who had spent a little time in the Canaries, assured us that this was a statue of Christopher Columbus, pointing west. Now Columbus did visit La Gomera, and is even reputed to have had an affair with the wife of the governor, the Princess Beatriz de Bobadilla, of savage repute, before heading off to the Americas. So it seemed perfectly feasible that a statue would have been erected to him.

Alarming cactuses and starry tabaiba bushes.

Feeling energetic one day, we and our four charterers decided that we would hike up the hill to pay our respects to Columbus. It was a longish climb up a steep hill. We managed to find our way out of town and passed by small houses, asking various people who were sitting outside in the sun, watching the world - and the visitors - go by, if this was the right way to the statue of Cristobal Colon. This is, of course, the Spanish name for Columbus and we were quite pleased with ourselves for knowing it.

Now the inhabitants of La Gomera are deeply, instinctively polite and kindly. So they all smiled at us, and nodded vigorously. Although we were aware of a certain puzzlement, nevertheless. You know what it's like when you think somebody's a bit odd, but don't really want them to know you think so, because it would seem rude? Well, that. We soon left the houses behind and hauled ourselves up the hill, past prickly pears and monumental cactuses and starry tabaiba bushes, closer and closer to the big statue, looking west.

Except that it wasn't Christopher Columbus at all. It was Jesus Christ, with a crown of light bulbs for stars, blessing the harbour. Some of his fingers had been damaged, which made it look - from a distance - as though he might well be pointing west. Not only had Alan's boss been just a little remiss in the matter of payments into the boat's account - he had also told a few porky pies about climbing to the top of this hill. We did the only thing possible, laughed a lot, sat in the sun for a while enjoying the stunning views, and then headed back to the boat for a few beers.

Not Columbus after all.

A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Three: Settling In

Simba lay rocking gently at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay. It was January. The sun was shining, the air was soft and warm and I was unpacking my bag and stowing away my kit in the tiny amount of cupboard space allocated to me.

Simba was by any standards a roomy boat, with a huge saloon and three cabins. Naturally, the two biggest and best cabins, each with a double bunk that was more like a double bed and its own large en suite shower, were reserved for the customers. Sometimes they were paying customers who chartered the boat from the company which owned it. Sometimes they were guests of the director, back in Scotland. A lot of the time we had the catamaran completely to ourselves. The skipper's cabin was smaller, but not uncomfortably so. And there was a toilet and shower next door, for our own use.

It was surprisingly easy to slip into the rhythm of living aboard, even for a fair weather sailor like me. Especially for a fair weather sailor like me. But I have to confess, I was still happiest sitting at anchor in Los Cristianos bay and watching the constant small procession of activities of this busy but essentially laid back port passing me by - as well as reading and writing. I did a lot of writing.

When we had visitors, we had to sail, which made my husband very happy.

It made me very sick.

I made several interesting discoveries on those voyages. One was that seasickness medication doesn't agree with me. The second discovery was that seasickness does eventually go away. It took me two weeks. (I counted every miserable day!) After two weeks spent aboard, sailing between islands, being literally prostrate with sickness, unable to even sit up without feeling dizzy and disorientated, it quite suddenly ceased. After that almost nothing would have made me sick. As anyone who has sailed will know, if you've been on a boat for a few hours, when you get off the boat, you can still feel the land moving - a very curious sensation. After the seasickness disappeared, this effect disappeared too. I was comfortable at sea and on land. But it took two weeks and the effect only lasts while you're living on board. If I were to do it all again, I'd have to go through the same uncomfortable process.

Simba was one of the biggest, flashiest and most beautiful yachts in the harbour so it wasn't surprising that she attracted a lot of attention. My husband was young and fit and - having spent most of the winter so far working aboard in the sunshine - looking particularly bronzed and attractive. I took a sort of perverse pleasure in stationing myself on the seaward side of the deck. Girls would hire pedalos in Los Cristianos and - assuming that Alan was alone on board - pedal out in the hopes of chatting up this 'rich' man with the fancy boat. They would circumnavigate Simba only to find me waving at them from the other side, whereupon they would lose interest and target another yacht and yachtsman.

We went ashore for provisions most days, in the big dinghy, leaving it tied up against the low wall of the slip. Sometimes we used an engine and sometimes we rowed, heading for the supermercado and then ferrying everything back to Simba.

When you're living on board a boat, everything takes time. When you're living on board a boat in the sun, you don't really mind. There are some things to remember though. Most of all, you have to remember not to block the sea toilets, being very careful at all times what you put down them. (Unblocking them is a hideous job for obvious reasons.) And you have to be careful never to waste water, since - even aboard a boat with big tanks - refilling them can be problematic. You become, by default, environmentally friendly.

There can be few things more irritating and alarming, incidentally, than hearing your latest charterers taking a ten or fifteen minute shower, even when they have been tactfully reminded that water is a finite resource. It doesn't happen with experienced sailors - but it sure happens with the other kind.  I got used to taking a pretty good shower using a bucket of clean water. A bucket and a half meant that I could wash my hair and do a bit of washing at the same time. Fortunately, the washing dried within a couple of hours when festooned about the boat like a curious collection of flags.

Water is at a premium in the Canaries, especially in this hot southern part of Tenerife. And it isn't very drinkable so you have to treat it or boil it. Or treat it and boil it. On the other hand, the water on the island of La Gomera is very good: fresh and sweet and clean. So we used to sail to La Gomera quite often. It proved to be one of the most magical places on earth. I knew I was going to have to write about it. And - eventually - that's what I did.

A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Two: Simba

So there I was, on a flight to the Canary island of Tenerife, joining my husband aboard a 50 foot catamaran called Simba, moored in Los Cristianos Bay. Packing had been a challenge. Simba was a big boat but as anyone who sails knows, space on board is always limited and I was going to be there for a few months. Fortunately, the weather was predictably good, so shorts, tops and pretty cotton skirts were the order of the day.

My husband Alan is a very experienced professional sailor which is more than can be said for me. He had worked as a trawler skipper for some years and then as a commercial diver off the West Coast of Scotland. Later, he ran a small business with his brother-in-law, David, diving for clams. Then, he did his RYA training and eventually became a yacht charter skipper as well as spending some time teaching sailing for the Scottish National Watersports Centre in Largs.

When we first met, he and David had also built a small sailing boat called Striker II  (The first Striker had been the clam boat) which they kept in Troon and sailed for pleasure. It was aboard this little yacht that I had my first taste of sailing.
I wasn't a natural. And it wasn't very pleasant.

The West of Scotland waters are beautiful, but the weather is uncertain. I was hideously seasick. My husband, on the other hand, has never been seasick in his life, so doesn't know how horrible it can be; not just the sickness but the general malaise, the intense depression, the awful disorientation. You begin by fearing the boat will sink, start to realize that you wouldn't care if it did and finally you really wish it would. And soon. The only way I could cope with it, when it was at its most intense and debilitating, was by lying flat on my back. As soon as we were in quiet waters, I was fine. Alan may not have been seasick, but he was quite used to people being sick on him. You can't work as a yacht charter skipper for any length of time without people being sick on your shoes and they frequently were.

There's an interesting fact about seasickness. It does go away. Eventually. Of which more in a future post.
Striker II was a yacht called a Seawitch and she was tiny. She would sleep four at a pinch, but you had to know each other very, very well. Intimately. We had a few uncomfortable but frankly hilarious trips - usually to the Isle of Arran for the weekend -  four of us together, myself, my husband, his sister Jackie and her husband David. The toilet facilities involved a plastic bucket, situated under the bunk where Alan and I slept. I still remember Jackie, wrestling with it in the middle of a very rough night in Lamlash Bay - victims of the notorious Lamlash Lop - declaring that this would be her 'last sea voyage ever!' Alan had crewed on and sailed much bigger boats, but even he, presented with the opportunity to skipper a 50 foot catamaran, had to pause for thought. Well, he paused for a few minutes anyway. And Simba was a big strong boat, for which he was mightily glad, as they battled through hurricane force winds on the way south. I was just glad I'd elected to fly instead.

I spent my first married Christmas back with my parents, but then I flew south in early January of 1986. I had never been to the Canaries before. I still remember the soft warmth of the air that hit me as I stepped off the plane into the Tenerife evening. The force of contrast with the wintry Scotland I had just left was acute and enticing. Alan, alone on the boat, had suggested that I get a taxi to the Gomera Ferry Terminal where he could pick me up on the dinghy and ferry me over to Simba which lay at anchor in the bay.That was my first problem. The last ferry of the day to the beautiful island of La Gomera had left (which was why Alan had suggested that he could pick me up from there) but the lovely, concerned Spanish taxi driver didn't want to drop a young woman off there all alone. He kept trying to take me to a hotel instead! With the help of a phrase book, and a few words of Spanish, I managed to persuade him that my husband was a sailor and I was joining a yacht. To be perfectly honest, I may have said to him that my husband was a yacht, but it did the trick. And there she was, our  home for the next few months: Simba.
She was nothing like Striker II.

A saloon big enough to hold a party in!

She was huge. Catamarans (unless they are stripped out racing catamarans) have a lot of internal space and this one was no exception. You could, and we sometimes did, hold a party in her saloon. She had two big master cabins, a captain's cabin, three showers and lavatories, a (disappointingly rather small) galley and that big, comfortable saloon. She lay at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay, amid a cluster of other, interesting yachts, big and small. She was one of the most beautiful vessels in the bay. The air was full of that fabulous Canary Isles mixture of sea air and flowers with a little hint of diesel.
I felt as though the birthday of my life had come.

A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters, Part One: The Fortune Teller

'The world ends where the sea is no longer navigable. There are the Gardens of the Hesperides where Atlas supports the sky on a conical mountain and where the great dragon guards the Golden Apple.' Herodotus.

Last week, I reblogged a post from Authors Electric about a trilogy of novels I'm working on, based on an old title. (You can read it just below this post if you want.) I plan to publish the first part in late June - as an eBook to begin with - if I can get my head down and work hard for the next few weeks.

One interesting aspect of working on something I first worked on many years ago is that all kinds of memories come flooding back. It was a magical time for me and now I find myself inhabiting it again. We can't ever go back, but as a writer, you can do it in your imagination. When I'm working, I often surround myself with mementoes, remembrances, evocations of the themes, the background and setting of a particular novel. This can involve pictures and books, music too. I'll watch films which somehow echo the mood of the novel I'm working on, pin up pictures of actors I would choose to play the characters in a movie. Scents play their part (which is why I'm walking about in a cloud of Neroli, right now)  Food, flowers, wine, herbs and spices -  you name it, it all somehow feeds into the project. I suppose it's like making a literary mood board and just as much fun. Maybe it's one of the reasons why I like Pinterest so much. I've started making a mood board for the novel(s) on there too. I know it's displacement activity, but since it seems to result in all kinds of ideas, I find it an invaluable tool for helping me to immerse myself in the story.

One other thing I've decided to do, and I'm not sure whether I'm doing this for my readers or myself - a little bit of both, I suspect - is to write a series of blog posts about two magical winters spent in the Canary Isles, back in the 1980s. They proved to be the inspiration behind several stories and an old novel of which this new trilogy will be a drastic and extended rewrite.

'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,' wrote L P Hartley in The Go-Between. Well, that's true, but sometimes it's good to revisit your own past, just to remind yourself of how you got where you are. And since readers so often ask, 'Where do you get your ideas from?' I'd like to say, this is where many of my ideas came from.

It was the 1980s. After university, I spent three years living and working in Finland and Poland, followed by a couple of years working as a Community Writer for the Arts In Fife. Then, I moved in with my boyfriend, into his 200 year old cottage where we're still living, here in the West of Scotland. I was pretty much writing full time, working on radio drama in particular with some television thrown in for good measure, and I was making a reasonable living. An ex-trawlerman and commercial diver, Alan was betwixt and between jobs. He had dipped into retail for a couple of years with a craft and pottery shop. The turnover was high, but not high enough to make it worthwhile. (Everyone else got paid. We didn't.) We were playing around with ideas as to what to do next, were wondering whether to move to the Isle of Arran and had even looked at properties there.

I went to see a fortune teller.

I'm not entirely sure why. She had come highly recommended and I was intrigued. I don't think I wanted to know anything in particular. I suppose I had questions about my career, but I wasn't dissatisfied in any way. Maybe I had some idea of writing about the experience since at the time, I was writing the occasional newspaper feature.

It was a very strange experience, one of the strangest of my life. She lived in a small, quite ordinary house in a small, quite ordinary Scottish town. She looked a little eccentric, but she was kindly and welcoming. She used - as far as I remember - Tarot cards and a crystal ball.  She warned me right from the start that she would describe a random series of events to me but she would have no idea whether they were in my past, my present or my future. Presumably I would be able to tell that but she didn't need to know. She didn't need me to say anything, really. She wasn't claiming to be communing with spirits (thank goodness) so there were no otherworldly platitudes. It was all curiously matter-of-fact but very vivid.

She did, indeed, seem to know some very odd and unusual things about my past and my present including something which was deeply personal, which had happened a long time ago, and which she told me about in some detail. There were a number of other events she described which I didn't recognise at all. Not until much later, anyway.

And then, she said, 'I can see an island. There's a mountain of some sort. Houses. The sea. You're going there. It's going to be very very important to you. Very important indeed.'

Now, we had been wondering about living on the Isle of Arran, had even looked at houses and businesses there. So I said - and any self respecting sceptic would have been proud of me for feeding her useful information  - 'Yes. You could be right. We were thinking about going to live on Arran.'

'Oh no,' she said, very firmly. 'Heavens no. It isn't Arran. I don't know where it is. There are little white houses. The sun's shining. It's warm. The sea's blue. There are lots of flowers. And there's a mountain like a ... ' she hesitated, 'like a mountain a child would draw, you know. That kind of shape. You're going there. It will be very important. In fact, it's going to change your life.'

A year or two later,  (the Arran venture having petered out) Alan had decided that he would like to try to carve out a career as a professional yacht skipper.  With considerable seafaring experience already, he quickly gained the necessary qualifications. Then, all unexpectedly, he was offered a job as skipper aboard a 50 foot catamaran called Simba. He would sail the boat to the Canaries in the autumn of 1985, making landfall at Tenerife, where Simba would sit at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay. The company who owned it would send charterers or occasional guests to spend time on board and he would take them where they wanted to go.

We'd been living together for a few years by that time, but in October 1985, we were married. We had our honeymoon in Bath and climbed Glastonbury Tor in brilliant sunshine. Then, only a little while after our return,  Alan sailed south (through a violent storm in Biscay, as it turned out) and reached the Canaries more or less in one piece. Just after Christmas 1985, I flew out to join him.

The sun was shining, the sea was blue, there were lots of flowers, and there was the peak of Teide, like a mountain a child would draw ...

Sometimes even Teide has snow!

Falling In Love (All Over) Again - Reblogged from Authors Electric

I'm reblogging my recent post on Authors Electric here today. Incidentally, if you haven't been to Authors Electric before, do have a look. You'll find a miscellany of interesting posts - a new one every day - by 29 independent and independently published writers including myself. Some of us have been traditionally published as well - some of us still are which I suppose makes us 'hybrid' writers, to use the current buzz word - while some have elected to go wholly indie. We're none of us too keen on labels, but our group includes genre, literary and mid-list writers (sometimes all within the same versatile person!)  award winning writers of all kinds, poets and playwrights, novelists and storytellers and non fiction writers. Many of us have held Royal Literary Fund fellowships or have been involved with teaching creative writing. Most but not all of us are UK based. What we have in common is experience and professionalism, coupled with an enthusiasm for writing and for our lovely readers. 

The post below will be the first in a whole season of Canary Isle themed posts here on my own Wordarts blog, because I'm working on a major new project, a trilogy of novels set largely in the Canaries and loosely based on an old back-list title, but substantially different from that early novel. There's also an interesting back story to all this, the inspiration behind it, and it struck me that it might be nice to tell it here, on my blog as I prepare the new novels for publication. 

When I first started this project, I thought it would involve typing up the manuscript, revising as I went along, but it soon became obvious that it needed much more than that. Major changes were in order. The book was originally bought by a medium sized publisher a long time ago. I think the central story is fine, but I’ve matured as a writer. Just as well, really. When I reread it before starting work on it, my chief emotion was a sort of horrified embarrassment and NOT, I might add, embarrassment at the significantly erotic content. It was more a question of writing technique and not the other sort. What, I kept wondering, was I thinking about? More to the point, what was my editor thinking about?

Happy days on board  'Big Cat' Simba

When I look at the novel now, I can see so many elements of it which need work, not least a confused and confusing perception of point of view. It began as a tale told from a limited third person point of view.It’s a story about Margaret Sinclair, in her thirties, newly divorced, shy, rather innocent and a little depressed. Desperate to get away from Scotland, she secures a job in property sales on the Canarian island of Tenerife. My editor at the time suggested that we also needed to see things from the perspective of the other main character, a Canarian called Luis. She may have been right about that (I'm still thinking about it) because (a) this is a story about a cross cultural relationship and we need to know what is going on in the head of the other half and (b) musician Luis comes from the small island of La Gomera which is central to the story, so his background is both interesting and important to the plot. 

Back then, and although feedback after publication was good, I don’t think I did it very well. To be fair, it isn’t easy. It’s the kind of thing I wrestled with in The Amber Heart where sometimes we needed to be with Maryanna and sometimes with Piotro, but not both at the same time. I think, eventually, I got it right in that novel, moving between the two without too many clunky changes, but learning how to handle it was a steep and very long learning curve. Now I need to go back to my Canary Isles novel with all the benefit of experience.

I reckon I also didn’t do it very well because we were in something of a hurry. If the novel had been published by the (old, distinguished) publisher who bought it, there might well have been a modicum of nurturing. But because the publisher was immediately bought over by a major corporation, it was published differently and with a garish cover. The novel was and will remain a sexy read. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it was a bit OTT, a bit too ‘80s’ – like the cover - in no good way. And why did I spend so much of it telling the reader what people said instead of having them actually say it? Beats me!

A close friend, a whole generation older than I am, has said to me that the central story is still good and vividly filmic. I hope she’s right. But I knew immediately I started working on it that it needed to be retold. There’s another thing about it: I can remember a phone call from the girl who was involved with publicity when it was first published. ‘I fell in love with Luis,’ she confided. ‘I mean really fell in love with Luis. I’ve never ever felt like that about a fictional hero before.’ Clearly I’d got something right then.

So what am I doing now?

Apart from listening to/watching this, on a loop, (OK, OK, I'll admit it, my hero was that young Banderas) I’m wrestling with point of view, and making it work, making it better.
I'm writing a lot more dialogue.
I’m working on the sexy bits, making them better. (This is a lot of fun, have to admit.)

Above all, I’m turning the basic story into three new and quite different novels, which involves a lot of extra writing, as well as drastic changes: The Golden Apple, (which was my old title because the one thing I really like about it is the title), Orange Blossom Love and a third novel called Hera’s Orchard. I’m planning to publish the first one in June, the second in the autumn some time and the third at Christmas, if I apply myself.

I’m also falling in love with my hero all over again. It’s a strange thing this writing love stories. You have to be a little bit in love with your characters, warts and all, to be able write about them. It doesn’t just apply to love stories either. When I was writing The Physic Garden, I had to crawl inside William Lang’s head and stay there for a very long time. I was passionate about William, emotional about him, even though The Physic Garden is a story about friendship and betrayal and by no means a romance. I felt for him in my heart as well as my head. But Luis was a dimly remembered affair and I had to rediscover him, find out what it was I liked about him all those years ago, find out what it was about him that made that young publicist fall in love with him so comprehensively.

It has been a surprisingly slow process. There's a part of me still hankering after Joe and Helen from Ice Dancing, to the extent that I know there’s a sequel to that novel kicking around somewhere in my imagination. And some part of my head is still back there with William Lang in 1800s Glasgow, in the physic garden of the old college of Glasgow University.

But I’m getting there. Luis is undeniably attractive. That's why Margaret falls for him against all her cautious instincts. He plays the guitar and sings. He’s impulsive, sensuous, fiercely proud and when all’s said and done, a wee bit too tempestuous for poor Margaret’s comfort. You know what? When I went back to this story, I felt the same way. Like when you meet an old boyfriend and wonder what you ever saw in him.

Sitting on board in the sun, writing. 

When I first drafted the story – like Kathleen Turner in The Jewel of the Nile - I was sitting on board a boat in the sun, writing, and I was madly in love with the Canary Isles myself. I'll tell you a bit more about that time in the coming weeks and months. The new Golden Apple is a story full of life and sunshine and music and that’s kind of what I need right now. I always liked Margaret, quiet, sweet, sensible, put-upon Margaret, with her hidden depths. Now I’m getting to know Luis all over again. Falling a little bit in love again. I think. I hope. Finding out a lot more about him. 

Or as one of the traditional Canary Island poems which run through the novel would have it: 
‘I love you because I love you.
Nobody tells me what to do with my love.
I love you because I feel it
deep in my heart.'

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym - A Reading Between The Lines Review.

I’ve just finished rereading Excellent Women for the umpteenth time. I really have lost count of the number of times I’ve read this book but it’s like going back to an old friend, comforting, stimulating, always amusing. My paperback copy from 1980 is quite literally falling apart. I had to read it clutching the pages together. It’s foxed and battered and pretty much disintegrating. I’m going to have to buy a new one very soon.

I like all of Barbara Pym’s novels, but the battered state of this one is testament to just how much I love it. The novel is set in postwar London, in a suburbia which reminds me very much of the London suburb where I spent a year as a child, when my father was working at a research institute there. That was a bit later, for sure, but still recognisable. We were in a flat very much like Mildred's, owned by the people downstairs, an elderly retired vicar and his rather scary wife with their 'good' furniture. She took my mother to church jumble sales and other events. I still remember her lamenting the fact that mum wouldn’t wear and had never in fact owned a fancy hat. Or indeed a hat of any kind. This lady was certainly an excellent woman.

Mildred Lathbury, the narrator in the novel, is a spinster in her thirties though she seems older, from a present day perspective when women are no longer set in spinsterhood in their thirties. She is a churchgoer, self deprecating, an ‘excellent’ woman – but her wry observations on life, on academia, on the church and on the opposite sex in particular, still delight me and make me laugh out loud every time I read them.

This is a ‘quiet’ novel but David Cecil called it ‘high comedy’ and it is. It is as sharp and well observed in its own way as the work of Jane Austen. Every time I reread it, I see more in it. It is as intricate, as well made as some beautifully inlaid box. This time, I suddenly became aware – as I think I had not before – of the wonderfully wrought overall structure of it: how perfectly made it is, and how excellent the ending – where we are invited to look to Mildred’s (very interesting) future without ever being certain of precisely how things will turn out. Except that for those who have read all her books, we do find out, because Barbara Pym was very fond of referencing earlier characters in later novels.

The other characters are all superbly drawn, superbly realised. There are no cyphers – all are vivid and vividly recognisable, from the attractive Rockingham Napier – Rocky – who was kind to the ‘Wren Officers’ in Italy during the war and who almost charms Mildred in the same casual way, to the fascinating but selfish widow, Allegra Gray, who enchants the vicar, Julian Malory. ‘I was a little dismayed,’ says Mildred, who has felt reluctantly compelled to offer to help Allegra with her curtains for her new flat ‘as we often are when our offers of help are taken at their face value, and I set to work rather grimly, especially as Mrs Gray was not doing anything at all... “I’m afraid I’m not very good at sewing,” she said.’

Miss Pym’s pen can drip acid, so gently that you hardly notice that it is acid. As Mildred and her friend Dora travel to a school reunion we learn that ‘In the train we read the school magazine, taking a secret pleasure in belittling those of the Old Girls who had done well and rejoicing over those who had failed to fulfil their early promise.
‘”Evelyn Brandon is still teaching Classics at St Mark’s, Felixstowe,” Dora read in a satisfied tone. “And she was so brilliant.”’
Who among us hasn’t done something similar? Who among us can claim never to have known an Allegra Gray? Who has never found themselves reluctantly undertaking some task on behalf of another person who complacently looks on and points our how we ought to be doing it?

In short, I love this writer and I love this novel. The writing is subtle, deceptively simple, unshowy, intelligent in the best possible way, human, insightful and in the last analysis, loving. A. L Rowse said ‘I could go on reading her for ever.’ I must say, I feel exactly the same. How Cape could ever have treated her so badly is beyond me. I remember that article in 1977 in The Sunday Times – after Pym had been shut out, denied traditional publication for some fifteen years, after a very successful career - when Pym's friend Philip Larkin (of whom I was and remain a huge fan) and David Cecil both nominated her as ‘the most underrated writer of the 20th century.’ I had already come across her novels in library sales, and subsequently pounced on anything else I could find. She writes about a world we have lost, she writes with astounding truth about women, she writes about a society which has undergone vast changes, but because she writes the most profound truth and writes it from the heart, she and her work will never really go out of fashion.

This is a 'Reading Between The Lines' review for the RBTL Review Collective. Go to our Facebook group for more review links here.

One More Reason To Love Amazon

Old Los Cristianos.

I'm in the middle of a new project which involves extensive rewrites and revisions of an old back-list title, which will be my next eBook publication. Actually, it will be two books, possibly even three, loosely based on a novel which was written and published many years ago. I don't often like to go back to old projects, but for all kinds of reasons which had more to do with changes in the publishing world, the publication didn't turn out quite the way I wanted. It was written (and acquired) as one kind of book and published as another. The novel I intended it to be - a book about cross cultural marriage and the adjustments that have to be made - disappeared somewhere down the corporate hole in the middle of the deal. It was reasonably popular at the time but when I read it now I can see all kinds of problems which should have been addressed at the editing stage. And it's rather dated. But at the heart of it, I think there's a good strong story in an intriguing setting. And I still like the central characters very much.

So I'm rewriting it. Drastically. Adding a lot, subtracting a lot, changing a lot and all of it in the light of experience. I seem to be a sadder and wiser person these days and it's showing in the story. By the time I've finished the first book in the series, it will - I feel - be quite different, although with enough of the old skeleton in there to satisfy the people who liked it the first time round.

So what has all this to do with loving Amazon, other than the fact that the new novels will be published on Kindle?

Well, this first novel in the series is set largely in the Canaries, on the islands of Tenerife and La Gomera. I wrote the first draft of this story back in the 1980s when I was living aboard a giant catamaran (called Simba - big cat - get it?) mostly at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay,  although with occasional sorties elsewhere, particularly to our favourite place in the whole archipelago: La Gomera. I'll be blogging a bit more about that time over the next few weeks. Needless to say, it wasn't OUR yacht. My husband was working as skipper for a charter company, and we would sometimes be joined by paying guests. Which wasn't all that happened. I came back expecting a baby!

But over the past few weeks, I've realized that I both need and want to know more about the history of these islands. Not because these are historical novels, but because one of my main characters is born and bred on La Gomera. I already knew something of his family heritage and was intrigued by it but - you know how it is with research - I had a hankering to know more, even if I didn't make detailed use of it in the new novels. Searching for the history of the Canaries, even online, doesn't elicit very much information. I had read as much as I could, back in the eighties, and still had some of the books and pictures from that time. I still had my notes from various sightseeing trips, and conversations with local historians. But there seemed to be a dearth of detailed histories in English and my Spanish leaves a lot to be desired. (Living on a boat, you learn the words for fibreglass polish and folding table but not much of an academic nature.)

I did a bit of googling which only pointed me to books, papers and sites I already knew about. So I turned to Amazon. Which, I now realize, was where I should have started. When you're looking for a book, but you haven't a scooby what it is, what it's called, who wrote it or even if it exists, Amazon is the place to go. I swear, within three clicks, Amazon had presented me with a couple of extraordinary accounts of the Canaries from the late 1800s, facsimile editions, complete with gorgeous pen illustrations. Not only that, but when I hesitated, wondering if I should buy these fat doorstops of volumes, I clicked on a review to read a charming, funny and detailed exposition by another reader who made the books sound irresistible. Another click and they were on their way to me. They arrived the following afternoon. (OK. I've succumbed to Amazon Prime. They even give you a two hour window for delivery)

And here they are. Beside me as I type this. Lengthy accounts of travels in the Canaries first published in 1887, written by an enterprising and engaging 'lady traveller' called Olivia M Stone.

So that's another reason why I love Amazon. There must be some seriously good and intuitive programming at work here. Within moments, they had suggested two books I didn't even know existed, books they delivered to my doorstep twenty four hours later, books which turned out to be exactly what I needed. Spooky. Like Lois Lane said of Superman: Can you read my mind?

The Hybrid Writer

Paul's Himalayan Musk Rose (Not a Hybrid!)

The following is reblogged from my April post on Authors Electric. I thought it was something worth repeating here, on my personal blog,  because the links may be useful to other writers while the idea of some writers doing all kinds of writing, published and produced in all kinds of ways, not just a particular genre or a particular form of publishing, may be interesting to readers as well.

Hybrid is, apparently, the new buzz term. 'You're going to be hearing about hybrid writers a lot soon,' remarked a colleague gleefully. Actually, the term was first invented (I believe) by the excellent Bob Mayer, some time ago but my colleague was absolutely right, and I already had been reading about it here, there and everywhere. I noticed it because I rather like the idea. It's one I'm comfortable with for various reasons and not just because I love roses, hybrid or not!

Now I know that a percentage of new authors self publish in the hope of being noticed by traditional publishing, big or small. Nothing wrong with that either if that's what you've decided you want. The slush pile has all but disappeared, having an agent no longer guarantees publication - nor has it for some time - and stories of traditional publishers trawling Amazon for successful novels are legion. Although if you do hit pay dirt with a best-selling eBook, the deal on offer would have to be pretty good to compete. I've had some good relationships within traditional publishing and production: excellent and committed small publishers, producers and directors who have taught me plenty over the years. Some of these relationships are still ongoing and I'm very glad of them. But I have also experienced the exact opposite in all its hideous misery.

These days I self publish very happily, love the experience of being a 'writer as publisher' and I'm certainly not publishing my work digitally in the hope of being 'noticed' or only by my readers and potential readers.  I'm also publishing in order to make some money. But I'm not totally independent and I doubt if I ever will be. Only some of us on Authors Electric are. Many of us have a foot in both camps. The truth is that (to mix my metaphors a bit) as a hybrid author, you can now have a finger in just about as many pies as you have fingers, especially when you write an eclectic mix of all kinds of work. With me, it isn't just fiction, long and short, but plays and non fiction too. And even with my fiction, there's no single genre and some of my novels are - I suppose -  more 'literary' than others. That's part of the fun of it. Not being tied down any more. Not having to shoehorn yourself into a tight little category because that's what your single publisher wants. Being able to say, 'let's do the show right here,' with some degree of success, being in control, but also being open to partnerships or the occasional traditional deal, whether it's for a story or an article, a review or a play, where what's on offer seems reasonable and non-exclusive.

The problem in the olden days of publishing and production wasn't just discoverability. It was maintaining professional visibility. Even people with whom you have worked successfully and happily in the past tend to forget about you if they don't see or hear from you. It's one of the reasons why so many playwrights camp out in theatre bars. Show face. Chat. Socialize. Now, I find that social media have been an undoubted factor in my rekindling some old professional relationships and that's an unexpected but welcome by-product.

Perhaps the simple truth is that writers have almost always undertaken a mix of work not just in order to survive, but in order to grow and learn and hone their craft. The number of writers who have moved smoothly from creative writing course to literary acclaim is vanishingly small but they also tend to be the most vociferously indignant and embittered about the new state of publishing. Perhaps they just feel threatened by change.

I think many of us would settle for being happily hybrid, writing, talking, teaching if that's what floats our boat, undertaking the occasional piece of contract work for a variety of outlets, aiming to thrive rather than just survive. Thriving is something that has been on my mind recently. Money doesn't buy happiness but it sure makes living a lot more comfortable in all kinds of ways.

Most of us write for love. Well, there's nothing wrong with that either. Nothing wrong with loving what you do even though it's hard work. Even though there's a certain dour mindset which subscribes to the belief that if you love it, it can't possibly be work. But even when we write for love, we can publish for money, especially now. Anyone seriously contemplating a career as a writer might think about doing some kind of business course if only to avoid exploitation. I remember what an eye opener it was for me, the first time somebody pointed out exactly how I ought to go about costing my time. (If you want to know more, you can download a guide from Glasgow's Cultural Enterprise Office, here) And the shocking perspective it gave me on major commercial organisations which still try to tell us that there's 'no money in the budget' to pay the writer for all kinds of extra work. I once found myself trekking through to Edinburgh from Ayrshire for a radio script meeting on my own time and money because there was 'no money in the budget to pay for travel expenses.' Back then, I put up with it. Many of us did. My favourite story from that time was of a friend who had something published in a magazine devoted to cats for which she was paid £5. Not a lot, even in the 90s. They also sent her a copy of the magazine and subtracted the price of the publication from her fiver!

These days, I'll do the odd gig for good causes, but I tend to subscribe to the Harlan Ellison school of thought where paying the writer is concerned. (But then it's a long time since I fell off the turnip truck!)

Meanwhile, I'd like to know how many college and universities offering Creative Writing or Creative Industries courses also offer detailed modules on the self employed business side of writing, everything from simple accounting and tax issues to branding and marketing. I'd lay bets not many of them do. Only last night I heard a contestant on Britain's Got Talent (I know, but it was a VERY quiet Saturday night and I was too tired to do anything except be a couch potato!) saying that he had started a music course at college, but his father had changed it to a business course. And I thought - surely, he would need both.

THE PHYSIC GARDEN, my new novel, now on Amazon's Kindle Store, here in the UK and here in the USA with a beautiful cover by Scottish artist Michael Doig. 

An Old Scottish Fashion Doll

 I don't know what she's called and I'm not even sure how old she is. She is a little like a doll called a 'Pandora' - a precisely and beautifully clothed 'fashion doll' . You can read all about these kind of dolls in an excellent research paper called Pandora in the Box, Travelling the World in the Name of Fashion.
Fashion, dress, is certainly her purpose. I don't think she was ever played with in the conventional sense - her condition is too beautiful. I found her in a local saleroom, here in Ayrshire, many years ago. I can't remember what I paid for her, but it wasn't a huge amount of money and she seemed like a bargain. I know that her dress is a variation on the 'Polonaise' style of eighteenth century dress, but she definitely wasn't made at that time - well, I'm fairly sure she isn't as old as that! She has the face of a Lenci doll in a way, but by no means so precisely moulded or so characterful, and if she were a Lenci doll she would be a lot more valuable. She is a rag doll of sorts, made of something that looks and feels like stuffed stockinette, with a head and face of stuffed linen, gessoed, I think and then with painted features and a (slightly spooky) wig of real human hair.

 She stands about 18 inches high, and as you can see from the pictures, she is fully clothed in layers and layers of hand stitched costume. These seem so very authentic that they taught me a great deal about how this mode of dress worked! Working from the outside inwards, she had a hat in pale pink satin, trimmed with little glass beads and with a blue glass hatpin. She has a pink satin 'Polonaise' overdress, with embroidered net sleeves, and tiny frills of hand made lace edging at collar and cuffs.

 The underside of this pink satin overdress is lined with a different peachy coloured material which is hand embroidered with beautiful little flowers and leaves.
Beneath this is a deep strawberry pink underskirt, consisting of a double layer of satiny fabric, peach on the inside, deep pink on the outside, all hand quilted together and fastening at the back with a little button. She has a white linen camisole laced with pink ribbons, and under that is a deep peachy pink satin corset, neatly laced, with under that a short linen shift (the kind of 'cutty sark' that Burns wrote about in the poem Tam o' Shanter.) You can just see the bottom edge of it underneath the pink corset, as I undressed her, below.

As you can see, she has a beautifully hand made petticoat under the quilted skirt. This too is in white linen and has a deep frill of scalloped cutwork embroidery, making a double layer with the plain edge of the skirt, and fluffing out the whole costume still more. 

Underneath that is a frilly peachy pink flannel petticoat (for warmth!) again buttoned, and with a little line of hand embroidery around the waist.
After that, come a pair of utterly gorgeous linen pantalettes. with tiny pintucks and tinier lace trim at the bottom, pulled together with pink ribbon.
And below that, a pair of handmade cotton stockings, with - an absolute triumph - a tiny but very handsome pair of white kid leather shoes with coloured beads trimming them.

She even has a little handmade hankie, with lace trim in her podgy fist. 

 I think she's wonderful. I keep her wrapped up in acid free tissue paper, but sometimes I take her along when I do talks about textiles, especially about Scottish whitework. I let people handle her with great care and admire the needlework. Many people see these kind of things in museums, but seldom get to handle them. I keep thinking there may be a story in her somewhere! But I'd dearly love to know more about her. I suspect she may have been a Scottish version of a fashion doll, a dressmaking project on which some seamstress demonstrated her many skills. I get the sense that she might not be that old, but the style of the work may well mean that she could be a hundred years or more. I've researched and hunted, but I have never seen anything quite like her. There are rag dolls in plenty and fashion dolls too but these are generally more lifelike and delicate with carved wood or porcelain heads. I've never seen such a marriage of a fairly crudely made doll with really exceptional needlework.

If you're reading this and you have any ideas, do comment below!

Bird of Passage, Free on Kindle to Mark the Start of Spring.

Cover art by Matt Zanetti

My novel Bird of Passage will be free to download on Kindle from 4th - 6th April. It's another 'island-set' novel. I seemed to go through a period of setting my novels and plays on islands, until I exhausted that particular piece of inspiration, but it still nips away at me from time to time. So the rewritten version of an old novel, The Golden Apple, due for publication next month, is set on a completely different kind of island: a much warmer place altogether, La Gomera in the Canaries. And even The Physic Garden, set fair and square in early nineteenth century Glasgow, has a trip to the Isle of Arran as a central and very important scene.

Bird of Passage, though, is set on a fictional and unnamed Scottish Hebridean island, which could be just about anywhere, from Gigha, which I know well, to the Isle of Skye, or Mull or Islay, or some amalgam of all of them. Oddly enough, the perception of where it is seems to depend on the reader's own experience and that's fine by me. I love that process which seems to go on, whereby the reader recreates the world of the novel within his or her own mind.

Susan Price, reviewing the novel for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure describes how she realized that there was a connection with a much more famous classic novel:
'I was three-quarters of the way through this book – or even more – before it dawned on me that it was Wuthering Heights in modern dress. I was tipped off by a couple of sly and amusing references to twigs tapping on windows and ghosts, and by the hero disappearing for twenty years and then returning a rich man.
It’s not a re-telling, though – it’s a re-imagining. A dialogue with the older book, if you like. It asks, would the same story, the same deathless love, be possible in the modern age, and if so, how?'
Link to the rest of the review here.

A very young me, in Wuthering Heights mode!

Susan is right. I wasn't attempting a retelling. I wouldn't dare. But Wuthering Heights has always been my all time favourite novel. I was born in Yorkshire and was trundled over the moors to Top Withins when I was still in my pushchair, or so I'm told. Bird of Passage is a book I was desperate to write, partly because of my own obsession with Wuthering Heights, but I spent years hunting for the right story, the right setting, the right set of characters.

Reviewing the novel for the Indie eBook review, Gilly Fraser writes:
There are no pat answers in this story and no neatly contrived solutions. Endings are jagged, situations remain unresolved. Yet at the end of the book there is a feeling of satisfaction that things did work out as they should – at least to some extent. I think that makes the story and its characters all the more realistic and credible. It’s hard to pigeonhole this book to a specific genre. It’s a love story, yet sometimes defies the label. It’s contemporary, yet dwells quite a bit in the past. As to its audience – I think this would appeal to readers who don’t need to be led by the hand and who enjoy
challenging relationships. Wholeheartedly recommended.

Read the rest of her review here

One of the nice things about reviews - especially when they are positive but quite analytical - is that they give you as a writer a new perspective on a novel. It's odd how often you're not entirely sure what you've written, or what you might have achieved, even though you've been in the thick of it, even though you may have had all kinds of intentions for the book. 

I'm often asked to describe the kind of books I write. It's a question I find genuinely difficult to answer, and reviews like Susan's and Gilly's help me to find some answers. My books aren't really romances in the conventional sense because they don't always have the traditional happy ending or even the traditional structure. They have a resolution of sorts, and I hope they give the reader a sense of satisfaction, but the characters don't generally walk off into the sunset. Or not often. One reviewer who loved this novel still found it heartbreaking, and people who have read The Physic Garden, even while they tell me they couldn't put it down, still tell me that they simply couldn't bear what happens in the end. I know what they mean because I couldn't bear it either, and I wrote it! 

Whenever I finish a novel, I try to work out what kind of book I've written. I know that may sound a bit daft. But when you're in the middle of a piece of work, you're so buried in the time and place, so deep into the minds of your characters, that you really can't see the wood for the trees. So it can be very helpful to stand back and try to analyse exactly what kind of novel you've produced. At first, I despaired of finding any common denominators within my fiction. Everything I write seems to be quite different: some are historical, some contemporary, some are more literary than others, some quiet, some complex.

Quite a while ago, an agent told me (and I'm paraphrasing here) that my work was too well written to be popular but too accessible to be really literary. She saw it as a fault. The more I speak to my readers though, the more I see that a lot of people out there are looking for stories which are well written and grown up, but accessible too. And I think that's what I write. Mainly because that's the kind of book I like to read. Lots of them are love stories. But I suppose they are 'grown up' love stories. I wish Amazon had a category like that, but they don't yet - and 'adult' has quite a different connotation! Even the Physic Garden, which isn't really a love story at all, but a story about male friendship and betrayal, is a grown up tale.

Bird of Passage is a very grown up love story -  about past damage and the obsessive attachment that is the result. And of course it is, unashamedly, a homage to my much loved Wuthering Heights. If this sounds like something you might enjoy reading, it's free to download for the next three days, here in the UK and here in the USA.

The Next Big Thing - The Golden Apple

I agreed to write a 'next big thing' blog when asked by an old friend Michael Bartlett of Crimson Cats  without thinking that almost everyone I know would already have done it. That's the nature of these chain blogs. It's a bit like pyramid selling. Those who are in at the start are OK.  But  one of my friends has a new Next Big Thing due out any time now, so I'll have at least one nomination. Meanwhile, here's a bit about my own Next Big Thing, with more to come soon.

Alan, my husband, on Tenerife, way back when....

What is the title of your next book?
It's the Golden Apple and it's an extensive rewrite of an old backlist title which sank without trace. But I loved the characters and the setting and the story. My original intentions for it got lost somewhere for reasons too complicated (and painful) to go into here. The new book will have the same skeleton but the flesh on those bones will be different.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
It's started out as a book about cross cultural marriage, something that has always interested me, perhaps because my dad was Polish and my mother was Leeds Irish. They loved each other to bits, their whole lives long, but it sometimes struck me that adjustments must have had to be made on both sides. As a child, I was never aware of it. I think my dad was just glad to be alive after the war. But all the same, it's something I have found myself thinking about and tackling in plays and fiction quite often. This was probably my first foray but I've done it since then. My novel Ice Dancing explores vaguely similar territory, and the sequel to that novel, which I'm already planning, certainly will.

What genre does your book fall under?
I'm always a bit phased by this question since just about everything I write crosses genres. I suppose I'll have to categorize it as a romance, but I'd quite like to invent a new genre: Grown Up Love Stories. That's what I often write.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition
I always had Antonio Banderas in mind for the hero, but time has passed and Luis is only in his early thirties! It would have to be somebody else tall, dark, sexy and Spanish. Any suggestions?

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?
She marries him in haste; will she or won't she repent at leisure?

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?
Oh self published. Like all my books, these days.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
For me, this is always a 'how long is a piece of string?' question. I never really know. When I'm on a roll I can get a first draft finished within a matter of months, and frequently do, but it will be a very very rough draft. Then I set it to one side and come back to it later, and repeat this process many times. I usually have a few projects on the go at once.

What other books would you compare yours to?
I actually can't answer this one. I don't know. I used to be compared to Daphne du Maurier, which is very flattering for me. I'd be happy to write so well.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
That's easy. Years ago, I spent a winter aboard a big catamaran in the Canary Isles with my husband, who at that time was a charter skipper. It was a company boat and we looked after charterers, but in practice they only arrived quite sporadically. Alan had his hands full most of the time looking after this beautiful big boat (it had two master cabins, three loos and showers, a captain's cabin and a saloon you could comfortably hold a party in) but I spent an enviable amount of time sitting on deck in the sunshine, writing. I wrote the first draft of the Golden Apple at that time. Then it went through the publishing process and got turned into something it wasn't. By the time I came back to Scotland, I was expecting a baby. The following winter, with Alan still working aboard a yacht in the Canaries, we borrowed a friend's apartment and I spent another few months in Los Cristianos, this time with a brand new baby. It was wonderful.
Now I'm restoring The Golden Apple to the novel I intended it to be, returning to the thoughtful book I first wrote. I was particularly inspired by the wonderful island of La Gomera which was my favourite place. I haven't been back since and they suffered with terrible fires last year, but I gather that they are flourishing again. A truly magical place. The novel is a love song to the Canaries really.

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
It's a sexy, sunny novel. It should be published later in the spring. Watch this space.

I'm passing this on to Cally Phillips 
Cally has had a 20 year career writing for stage, screen and latterly fiction. She has worked as script reader for Channel 4, as secretary of Scottish Branch of the Writers Guild and held Drama residencies with DGAA and WLYT. As Artistic Director of Bamboo Grove Theatre Company (2002-2006) and facilitator for ABC Drama Group (2003-2010) she developed an advocacy style of theatre. In 2010 Cally set up HoAmPresst Publishing and in 2012 Guerrilla Midgie Press (an advocacy publisher) Cally has published novels, plays and short stories (in Scots). She is the director of the online Edinburgh eBook Festival which is held in August.

Support Your Local Writer

Cover art by Michael Doig

An arts magazine to which I subscribe dropped through my letterbox yesterday morning and sent my blood pressure sky high. This is a little publication which focuses mainly on art and artists. But the current issue devoted a large chunk of its available space to an anti Amazon, pro bookstore rant with the now wearily familiar exhortation to us all to support our local small businesses and shun those giant corporations like Amazon, Starbucks and Google. I'm assuming the editor doesn't use a PC or a Mac to construct his copy, but I wonder what he uses instead? Pencil and paper? One of those old printing sets you used to get in your Christmas stocking?

There was, however, a significant omission from his rant in favour of small businesses: the thousands of small business people without whom there would be no books whatsoever. 

You've got it. Writers.

It amazes me how often certain commentators speak and write lovingly about books (their smell, their feel, their physical form)  independent bookstores (struggling local businesses worthy of our support) and publishers (under threat, under pressure, under the cosh)  but relegate the one small business person without whom NONE of these would exist, to the sidelines.

A nice little hobby?

Part of the problem is that only a certain percentage of writers think of themselves as professionals, as people running a small business. But isn't that the same with any 'creative' pursuit? Back when my husband was wearing himself out (quite literally as it turned out - he now has serious arthritis) on huge woodcarving projects, people would watch him at work and remark on what a 'nice little hobby' it was for him. So for every writer who sees him or herself as a professional there will be a dozen happy dabblers - and why not? It's a good thing to do. But the knock-on effect of this is that assumptions are made, assumptions which we sometimes have to challenge.

I've had a long and interesting career but like all writing careers it has been a bit of a switchback. And I've learned that it is never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. But right now, somebody is actually facilitating my business, distributing my books and paying me on a regular basis and that somebody is Amazon. Those by no means large but wonderfully regular payments are what allow my own small business to support many other small businesses, like the variety of young, self employed digital artists who have worked on my eBook 'covers' with me and the local company  Paligap, which built my Wordarts website for me. Not forgetting our village cafe  and pub to which I escape to from time to time. 

Encouraging customers to support one particular local business is all very well - especially if that business is well loved and is serving its community in all kinds of interesting ways. And I love indie bookstores. Especially the ones with cafes, the ones where local writers and book groups hang out, the ones which encourage readings, the ones where the owners are welcoming - unlike the indie bookshop which had better remain nameless, to which I delivered a small box of my very much local interest books on the explicit instructions of my publisher who claimed to have arranged the visit in advance, only to be met with something verging on hostility!

Sailing to a bookshop?

There are a few excellent independent bookshops which might loosely be described as local. Those in Wigtown - a beautiful place - involve an hour's drive along winding, hilly, country roads, pitted with potholes that might better be defined as craters and made horrible by log lorries, bouncing along the middle of the road at high speed. I shop there from time to time, but not often. The other involves an hour's drive in the opposite direction and 45 minutes on a car ferry. Forgive me if clicking on the great Amazon in the clouds so often seems like a much better option when I want a book right now, especially if I can get it for my Kindle and be reading it instantly. Good for the writer. Good for the reader. 

Asking people to boycott a system which demonstrably benefits producers and customers alike seems illogical and unfair. And as Hugh Howey wrote in a recent blog post, the real story is NOT him. (Although his is a wonderfully inspirational story for all of us!) No. It's the thousands and thousands of writers like me, writers who were told by their blinkered industry time and again that no matter how excellent their product, nobody wanted it. The midlist was dead. Well, turns out it was only taking a nap. Now that it has woken up, it's alive and kicking. And here we are, small business people, managing to connect directly with our real customers - our readers - and finding out that there is an appreciative market for our products after all.