The Physic Garden - Ten Discussion Points for Book Groups

There has already been some interest in the Physic Garden from various book and reading groups, which is very encouraging for me. I do feel that it might be a good read for a book group in that it raises a great many issues - issues, moreover, that I can imagine might be quite contentious. Not that it's really an 'issue based' novel. It's a novel in which character is central, a story of friendship and betrayal. It is, now that I come to think about it, a novel with a reliable narrator - but reliable (and lovable) as William is, it's also about his struggle, in old age, to come to terms with the traumatic events of his youth. Although it's undoubtedly quite a literary novel, it's accessible too. And, I hope, readable.

It was favourably reviewed in the Sunday Times this week, which delighted me. It has had wonderful, thoughtful reviews elsewhere, but the Sundays have so many submissions and, on the whole, they review so little fiction that just being noticed seems like an additional achievement!

I've come up with ten points that might be used to spark debate. I'm sure readers will have their own. And I'm anxious not to prescribe any single 'right' response to the novel. All stories are recreated over and over in the minds of individual readers and that's just as it should be. But do feel free to save and copy these and use them in whatever way seems most helpful to you. I'm sure readers will have plenty of additional questions and opinions of their own. I should add that I've tried very hard NOT to add any spoilers. There's nothing in here that you probably couldn't deduce from reading about the book. But if you're in any way worried about it - stop reading now! 

1 The Physic Garden has been described as a ‘beautiful, elegant expression of betrayal’. The author herself has characterised the novel as being about friendship and betrayal. What do you think are the big themes of the book?

2. How did you feel about the novel’s two main characters, William Lang and Thomas Brown? Was your sympathy entirely with William, or did William’s narration allow you to understand something of what motivated Thomas Brown?

3 Did you anticipate the denouement and how did it affect you? Do you think you would have responded to events in the same way as William?

4 Would you describe this as literary or historical fiction? The author describes various traditional activities such as beekeeping, needlework and foraging, but these are important for the story itself. How far does this help the reader to immerse him or herself in the world of the novel?

5 The novel also focuses on the science of the nineteenth century and on the tensions between medicine and the newly developing skills of anatomy and surgery. Did you find yourself agreeing with William, or – from a 21st century perspective – did you find that Thomas had a more balanced view of potential medical developments?

6 Another reviewer has pointed out that the over-arching theme of the novel is ‘the price of knowledge’. This is a dilemma we still face today. Do you think you might have felt differently if you were living in early 19th century Scotland and how much did the novel make you wonder about this?

7 The women in the novel are a little more shadowy than the men but, since it is written from the perspective of one of those male characters in a patriarchal age, this may be inevitable. How do you feel about historical novels in which female characters are given 21st century qualities and freedoms? Do you think it matters? Does it affect your enjoyment of a novel?

8 William’s ‘voice’ has been described as ‘individual, idiosyncratic’ and ‘flexible enough to express emotions from the happiest to the very blackest.’ What were your feelings about William by the end of the novel? Did you like him? Did you feel that he had led a good life, or that he had missed out on something? If he had been alive today, how do you think things might have played out for him, and would he have been any happier as a result?

9 William points out that knowledge is not always the same thing as wisdom. Do you think William has acquired wisdom by the end of the novel? What about Thomas? Apart from his final letter, we only have William’s perspective on him. How much do you think that last letter helps to explain earlier events?

10 William also says of his friend Thomas that ‘it can be a peculiar curse and a burden to be a man whom people love. Better by far to be a man who loves unconditionally.’ Do you think this is true, and if so, why? 






The Physic Garden - Glasgow and Ayr Launches, Coming Soon!

Cover image courtesy of Glasgow Museums
The Physic Garden is, it seems, already 'out there' in paperback. At least that's what some friends and Amazon are telling me (and even sending me pictures to prove it.) But really, the official launch will be on Thursday 27th March, in Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow at 7pm and a week later, on Thursday 3rd April, in Ayr's Waterstones at 6.30.  I've been busy inviting friends and acquaintances, and I do hope plenty of people come along.

I'm going to be talking about some of what inspired and lay behind the novel, some of the intensive historical research that went into it and how I feel about my main character, William Lang, who narrates the whole story as an old man looking back on his youth. I'm very fond of him, but there's more to it than that. Actually, I still recall the considered judgement of an 'industry insider' who had better remain nameless that the whole novel was 'just an old man telling his story' which is the kind of remark that burns itself into your heart and stays there, festering slowly. Not even a clutch of excellent reviews and a whole lot of praise can ever quite erase it, although they certainly help!

My publisher Saraband has made a wonderful job of this book - the actual hold-it-in-your-hand artefact  - and the cover, with an image courtesy of the excellent Glasgow Museums, is to die for. This stunning sampler is part of their collection. One of the characters in this literary historical novel, Jenny Caddas, is a fine needlewoman, and in the course of the story she makes an embroidered christening cape. I'm planning to bring a similar cape along to the launches, since I have one in my own textile collection - another source of inspiration, although not the main one.

Now, I'm trying to decide which bits to read out:  just enough to tantalise people into wanting to read more. I've been sitting up late and practising. But really, it's no hardship because I love reading aloud. I suspect most playwrights - and that's what I do when I'm wearing one of my other hats - love reading their work aloud and sometimes even going so far as to act it out. I sometimes think that we're show-offs at heart even though we like to pretend to be quietly self effacing writers.


A Valentine's Day Special: Two Love Stories For the Price Of One

Cover by Alison Bell
If you haven't read the Curiosity Cabinet (and although it has definitely been my best selling novel to date I know there are quite a lot of people out there who haven't!) then I've planned a very special offer for Valentine's Day and the following week. From 13th February to 19th February, The Curiosity Cabinet will be on a 'Kindle Countdown' deal and you'll be able to download it for the bargain price of 99p in the UK and around a dollar in the US. That's a lot less than the price of a cup of coffee.  

Many - but by no means all - of my novels, involve very grown up love stories. But with this book, you'll be getting two love stories for the price of one,  two parallel stories, past and present. 

In present day Scotland,  Alys revisits the beautiful (fictional) Hebridean island of Garve after an absence of twenty five years, and finds herself captivated by the antique embroidered casket on display in her hotel. She discovers that it belongs to Donal, her childhood playmate on the island, and soon they resume their old friendship. 

Another ancient McNeill

But interwoven with the story of their growing love is the darker historical tale of Henrietta Dalrymple, kidnapped by the formidable chieftain, Manus McNeill, and held on Garve against her will and with no inkling of the reason why she has been imprisoned. 

With three hundred years separating them, the women are linked by the cabinet and its mysterious contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the island itself. But Garve has its secrets, past and present. Donal must learn to trust Alys enough to confide in her and, like Henrietta before her, Alys must earn the right to belong.


The island and its people are fictional, but the landscape is very like the landscape of the beautiful little island of Gigha which I know well. I'm told that it seems like Coll too. 

I'm always a bit bemused by the reviews of this book since they tend to be wildly differing, even when they're positive (and most of them are positive, thanks to my many lovely readers!) But it's clear from reading them that some readers see it as a tightly, tautly written book with great depths, whereas others see it as a frothy 'guilty pleasure'. In house agent's parlance (real estate if you're reading this in the US) it probably means that the book is 'deceptively simple'.

The truth is that whether you find it deceptively simple or genuinely simple, it doesn't matter, just as long as you enjoy it. I hope, at least, that you believe in Alys and Donal, and in Henrietta and Manus. Because I grew very fond of them, and of Alys's little boy Ben, as well.  

It's a book about the present redeeming the past - and also about the ways in which a beautiful and largely unchanging place with an  intense history can hold something of the past, even within its present. 

One of my readers called it a 'beautifully crafted tapestry of a book' and I'm grateful that s/he understood exactly what I was trying to do in the novel - and took pleasure from reading it. Because it was certainly a great pleasure for me to research and write it!

Why not give it a try at the links below? 

You can also visit my website to read a bit more about what I'm working on right now, and find out about my other books, especially my new - and much darker - historical novel, The Physic Garden, which has just been published as an eBook by Saraband, and is due for release in paperback in late March.  











Editors and Artistic Directors - So Much In Common.

Coming back to theatre with a bang: Wormwood
Novelist (and friend) Gillian Philip wrote an excellent piece on editors and editing for the winter edition of the Society of Authors in Scotland newsletter. So many people wanted to read it that she reposted it on her own blog, here and I can very much recommend it. 

I had just been involved in an online discussion about the role of the artistic director in a stage play and reading Gillian’s post, it struck me that there are parallels between a good artistic director and a good editor – just as there are striking and unfortunate parallels between a bad director and a bad editor.
Let me get the horror stories out of the way first.
Back when I was starting out in theatre, I wrote a play about the Solidarity movement in Poland and its effects on one family. I was ecstatic to be told that it would be performed at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. That, though, was where the ecstasy ended. The first time I met the artistic director I realised that we had opposing views of the play. He took the script away and sent it back to me with massive rewrites on every page. He had torn it to bits, deleted large sections and rewritten it as the play he thought it should be. I fought as best I could, and so did the (lovely) cast, but it was a disaster. I was too young, too naive and too inexperienced. He was an elderly bully and it was years before I went back to theatre - with a play about the Chernobyl disaster for the Traverse in Edinburgh.
Later, this time with a novel, I encountered an editor who tried to do something similar. To be fair, some of the points she made were good, but she also made extensive changes to my manuscript without tracking them, rewriting whole chunks of my work in the kind of voice and idiom she would have used herself. By that stage I was confident enough to dig in my heels, but it was a tedious and time consuming business, going through my version and hers, reinstating my dialogue but trying to do useful rewrites where she had made fair points – which she had.
When I thought about it, I realised that a good artistic director and a good editor share quite similar qualities.
An artistic director will hold the ‘idea’ of the play in his or her head. The buck stops with her. If she is on anybody’s side, she is on the side of the play itself as you have intended it to be not as she might have written it herself. Not even as she wishes you had written it. It is her aim to make it as good as it possibly can be on its own terms. She will never do that by imposing her voice on the voice of the playwright. The process is much more collaborative, more fluid, more fascinating than that and since most directors are freelance she will almost certainly walk away rather than take on a play she dislikes. Since editors are increasingly freelance too, the same thing applies.
Anne Marie Timoney and Liam Brennan in Wormwood
There is an etiquette in theatre, so the actors will talk to the director and the writer will talk to the director, but the writer will not give instructions to the actors and the actors will not ask the writer for changes except through the director. If you know each other and have worked together before, there is a lot of leeway and what eventually emerges is a comfortably collaborative process. But I can think of many occasions where, for example, an actor has asked for changes and the director has said ‘not yet. Try it the way it’s written.’ The good director takes the work seriously, treats it (and you) with respect, but helps the playwright to see what needs to be seen. A little way into the rehearsal process, you can see where something isn’t working but it’s almost always you who make the changes.

Happy days with a very good director: Hamish Wilson
This is how it works with a good editor. I’ve just been working with one on the Physic Garden and it has been a joy. I knew that there was something not quite right somewhere, but I wasn’t sure what it was. It was something small, but it niggled. The editor read the manuscript, said ‘I love this book’ but instantly put her finger on what it was that had bugged me and the publisher. It was indeed something quite small but once she had pointed it out, it also seemed obvious and important. (It was one of those ‘why didn’t I see that?’ moments.) And it had a couple of knock-on effects on the rest of the story.  Essentially, it was a case of finding out how a particular character might really react at that point in the novel, and addressing it. It was the work of a couple of days to make the changes, but it mattered. There were other bits and pieces, of course: punctuation, the odd inconsistency or infelicity. But really, it was her ability to hone in on one small but vital facet of the story that was priceless and I’m glad I made the changes, glad to have worked with her. 

A good editor, like a good director is both unselfish and generous. But I’ve also come to realise that not everyone possesses those qualities, although they may be learned over a period of years. My genuinely bad experiences - I can count about four and that isn’t very many - involved people who were too ignorant to know how little they really knew. (Youth, though, wasn’t an issue because some of them were old enough to know better.) They were on a power trip, over confidently imposing their own views on whatever work they were editing or developing.  It was, I realised eventually, a bit like that scene in the Matrix where Agent Smith converts everything into a clone of himself. Too bad Neo wasn’t around to fight my corner when I needed him.

A Kindle Countdown Special Offer and a New eBook Release as well


I have so much going on at the moment that it's hard to find the time to blog about it! 

But if you're reading this post any time between 30th January and the 5th February, you can download my novel Ice Dancing for less than the price of a cup of coffee. It will be on a Kindle countdown deal for a week. In fact you could get the book to go with your cup of coffee and read about Scottish  village life in all its engaging reality at the same time.

I'm seriously considering rebranding the way this novel is presented. I think the cover, which is very beautiful, actually gives the wrong impression of the book. This is not the artist's fault, but entirely mine. She had much better ideas but I wanted the hockey player. I think I was wrong. I often am! We feel our way into this business and sometimes we make mistakes. So later this spring, I'm going to ask her if she can redesign it for me.

Anyway. What IS it about, if not about hockey? And why the Ice Dancing? 

 It's what I would call a very grown up love story with a lowland Scottish village setting, a novel about the lightning strike of love at first sight, a story of past suffering and the possibility of healing. I think it's quite literary, but then what does that mean? It's intelligent, I hope. But not inaccessible. And - glory be - it has a slightly older heroine. She's approaching forty. And she falls in love. With a younger man. 

Which is probably why this novel just HAD to be indie published. 


It's set somewhere a bit like this.
Helen - who narrates the novel - has almost resigned herself to the downward slide into mildly discontented middle age. She's a Scottish farmer’s wife, living in a rural backwater, with her only child about to fly the nest. But when she meets and falls in love with Joe, a Canadian ice hockey player spending a season with a local team, she realises that nothing will ever be the same for either of them again. 

Joe is nine years younger and a hero to die for, attractive, polite and articulate. But like many of my novels, which so often deal with friendship and betrayal as well as love, this is a story with a dark side. Although Joe skates like an angel, he has his own demons to cope with, a sadder, more complicated and much more shocking past than Helen could ever imagine. 

A bit like this as well!
The title is all to do with partners. Helen has been doing Line Dancing in the village hall. You don't need a partner for Line Dancing. You don't have to touch anybody. But if you're dancing on ice, and you're unsure of yourself, a partner can certainly come in handy.

Anyway, if you'd like to give it a try, and you have a Kindle or a Kindle app, you can get it cheap, here in the UK and also in the USA, (at this link) for seven whole days. You don't have to be a hockey mom or even a hockey fan to enjoy it (although it won't harm) and it might help if you're a wee bit curious about the joys and occasional sorrows of life in contemporary rural Scotland. But really, it's a story about love, about betrayal and damage, and about healing. 

I'm keen to see this novel selling well because I badly want to write the sequel. And I probably will write the sequel sooner or later. But it would be kind of nice if a few people were asking for it!

Meanwhile - but also on the subject of betrayal and friendship as well as a lot of other things besides - my new historical novel The Physic Garden is due to be published in its eBook form on ALL platforms, on 1st February. You'll find it on Amazon, but everywhere else as well. And then, ta-dah! - it will be published in paperback on 27th March with the very beautiful cover below. This one is published in the traditional way by  SARABAND, a publisher in a million and Scottish Publisher of the Year for 2013. Check out some of their other excellent titles. I'm very proud to be published by them, glad to be in such company,  and - if all goes well - I'm hoping to be able to work with them in the future. 

Cover picture, courtesy of Glasgow Museums.

















There Was A Lad - Happy Birthday to Rab.


This post is reposted from my last Authors Electric post. I thought it might be worth another outing on my Wordarts blog. After all, you can't have too much of a good thing, and Rab was a very very good thing!

On 25th January 1759, our national poet (or one of them - we're not short of poets up here) was born.
Or as Rab himself would have it: 

There was a lad was born in Kyle, 
But whatna day o' whatna style, 
I doubt it's hardly worth the while 
To be sae nice wi' Robin. 

Our monarch's hindmost year but ane 
Was five-and-twenty days begun, 
'Twas then a blast o' Janwar' win' 
Blew hansel in on Robin.

Kyle is a part of Ayrshire (the others are Carrick, where I live, and which has lots of Burns associations too) and Cunningham, a bit like the Ridings of my native Yorkshire. The blast of January wind blew down the chimney of the cottage that Burn's father had built for himself and his family in Alloway, near Ayr. You can listen to the whole poem if you like, here, recited engagingly by Alan Cumming for the BBC. 

So this post is a wee pre Happy Birthday shout out to possibly my favourite poet of all time: Robert Burns. 

Here's one we did earlier!
We'll be having a smallish, private Burns Supper in this village about a week later. We'll eat traditional food: cock-a-leekie soup, haggis, steak pie, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, trifle, oatcakes and cheese. This is not, I have to confess, my favourite meal of the year. I can pretty much take or leave everything except the trifle, the oatcakes and cheese. But the company is always good. There will be plenty of wine, some whisky, excellent conversation, poetry, a few short and entertaining speeches, lots of toasts and some songs.

I have, occasionally, been invited to speak at other, more formal Burns Suppers - on one memorable occasion I had to give the 'Immortal Memory' which is the big speech of the evening. I had a tooth abscess and was on those antibiotics where they warn you not to touch a single drop of alcohol because it will have disastrous effects. (This is true, by the way. The effects are, I'm told, instantly emetic!) So I had to do it completely sober and toast Rab in mineral water.  The poet would have sympathised, both with the toothache and the abstinence.

Not quite how I first saw the cottage.

I've loved his poetry, but most particularly his songs, ever since we first moved to Ayrshire when I was twelve. I used to walk to Burns' Cottage in Alloway - still very atmospheric back then - and spend an hour or two daydreaming. The poems so precisely and heart-rendingly reflect the countryside around here. The poet himself seemed such a mass of contradictions - and the more I researched his life and work, the more intriguing those contradictions became.


My play about Robert Burns on Kindle.
I wrote a full length radio play for BBC R4 all about the writing of Tam O' Shanter, and then a stage play for Glasgow's Oran Mor, called Burns on the Solway.  As the playwright, I found the whole production more illuminating than I had believed possible - when a production goes well, and this one did, it somehow intensifies and enhances the idea you first had. And now, I seem to be writing a novel, about which I can't say any more than that it has been simmering inside me for a very long time. Perhaps since I was twelve and daydreaming in the old cottage. But even while I was writing The Physic Garden, William Lang, in that book, insisted on talking to me about Burns - who would have been a much more recent memory for my narrator. (Burns died in July 1796)


Donald Pirie and Claire Waugh, a compelling Robert and Jean.
First, William says 'I often think Mr Burns and myself might have had a great deal in common if we had had the good fortune to meet and talk about our respective experiences. Burns wrote convincingly and lovingly about the flowers of his native heath. I cannot even now read the lines, oft hae I rov'd by bonny Doon, to see the rose and woodbine twine; and ilka bird sang o' its luve, and fondly sae did I o' mine, without it bringing a lump to my throat, which is a very daft notion after all this time.'

And later, he quotes again: 'The tocher’s the jewel, as the poet Burns wrote. And so many men are but knotless threids who will slide away from lassies at time of need.'

Poets, male and female, don't always practise what they preach, and Burns was very far from being the saint depicted in so many fulsome Burns' Supper speeches. He was, in fact, capable of appalling behaviour, even by the different standards of his day. But any eighteenth century man who can write a song like The Tocher's the Jewel, has got to be applauded. Here's the original - followed by a loose translation for anyone who needs it.

O meikle thinks my Luve o' my beauty,
And meikle thinks my Luve o' my kin;
But little thinks my Luve, I ken brawlie,
My tocher's the jewel has charms for him.
It's a' for the apple he'll nourish the tree;
It's a' for the hinny he'll cherish the bee;
My laddie's sae meikle in love wi' the siller,
He canna hae luve to spare for me.

Your proffer o' luve's an airle-penny,
My tocher's the bargain ye wad buy;
But an ye be crafty, I am cunnin,
Sae ye wi' anither your fortune maun try.
Ye're like to the timmer o' yon rotten wood,
Ye're like to the bark o' yon rotten tree,
Ye'll slip frae me like a knotless threid,
And ye'll crack your credit wi' mae nor me.

Oh much thinks my love of my beauty,
And much thinks my love of my kin
But little thinks my love, I know fine,
My dowry's the jewel has charms for him.
It's all for the apple he'll nourish the tree;
It's all for the honey he'll cherish the bee
My laddie's so much in love with the silver (money)
He has no love to spare for me.

Your offer of love is an arles penny (this was money paid to seal a deal, usually between servant and master!)
My dowry's the bargain you would buy
But if you're crafty, I'll be cunning,
So you with another your fortune may try.
You're like to the timber of yon rotten wood,
You're like to the bark of yon rotten tree,
You'll slip from me like a knotless thread
And you'll  spend all your credit with more than me.

Not the best translation in the world, mostly because some of these words and phrases are virtually untranslatable - and still current, here in Ayrshire. Only a little while ago, I heard somebody describing a man sadly but accurately as a knotless threid. But it's this poem, among many other wonderful poems and songs, with its powerful and angry evocation of the voice of the young woman, that pays for all. For me, anyway.

I'll finish with another image from the play, courtesy of Leslie Black who took a series of stunning production photos.



Happy Birthday, Rab, when it comes.

My Writing Process

I've invited by Susan Price to take part in the My Writing Process Blog Tour. Susan is a fellow member of the Authors Electric where you can also find both of us blogging on a monthly basis.

Here are some thoughts on how and why I do what I do:

1 What are you working on?
I’m working on the final proofs and publicity for a novel called The Physic Garden which is about to be published by Saraband Books. It will be out in hardback on March 27th and in eBook form a little earlier than that. It’s a historical novel about friendship and betrayal, among much else. Working with Saraband has, I have to say, been a real pleasure. A publisher in a million. 


2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
The novel is a piece of literary historical fiction. Is that a genre? Maybe it is! But I’d hesitate to label it too precisely. I don’t think a piece of fiction has to be unreadable or inaccessible to be literary, nor do I think fiction has to be facile to be popular. There are a lot of voracious readers out there, young and old. They may be reading on Kindles and on other devices, so we don’t always spot them when we’re travelling, but they are still reading and loving stories. I know because so many of them seem to want to talk about books and stories online. More than ever, I think.

3) Why do I write what I do?
I write what I do simply because I love what I do. I had a faintly bizarre conversation over the Christmas holidays with somebody who thinks I should be writing more comedy. And for television at that. Well, if that’s what I was doing, I would perhaps be making a bit more money. But you can only pick and choose what you write to a limited extent. On the whole, it chooses you. That’s also why – on the whole, and I know there are exceptions – you can’t often write those stories that people tell you about themselves, however good and interesting they are. 

As a writer, you always have far more ideas than you have time to tell them. So when people ask ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ which is a perfectly good and valid question, it can be quite hard to explain that you are never short of ideas. They come in droves. You have a head full of them. They jostle for place and even when you’re writing one novel, there may well be a whole cast of other characters, niggling away at the back of your mind, waiting to be heard. What you are often short of is the time to write those ideas.

A cast of characters, waiting to be heard!

4) How does my writing process work?
I do a lot of writing and I do some writing almost every day. I’m quite disciplined and if I have a deadline to meet I’m very disciplined indeed. I write a novel as one long document, in Word, divided into chapters, and I write very quickly. But I wouldn’t let anyone except me see that first draft. I don’t really even talk about the novel at this early stage. If you talk too much about a project it can disappear before your very eyes. Once I’ve got something to work on, a complete manuscript, however sketchy or clumsy, I do lots and lots of rewrites and revisions. Lots of polishing. I do plenty of research beforehand, but I often find out what I don’t know when I’m writing the novel, so I’ll go back to researching as the story progresses. 
I love revising and reworking. It’s like living with these characters in this setting and it’s very enticing. When I have to stop and when something is finished and published it never quite feels finished. It’s a sad time. I have to get going on something else almost immediately, otherwise I miss the characters too much and (as I’m doing right now with an old project) can sometimes be enticed back into writing a sequel – or writing about the same character in another form. 

I've passed these questions on to Michael Malone, and to Uuganaa Ramsay, who blogs here, both of whom are also Saraband Authors - fine writers both. Do visit their blogs and read on!



Happy New Year - and a bit of advice.

2013 was mixed, to say the least. For several much loved friends and a few relatives, it was, not to put too fine a point on it, a pig of a year. I was glad to see the back of it on their behalf and found myself hoping for much better things from 2014.

But there were good points and highlights too, chief of which - for me - was working with the wonderful Saraband - a publisher in a million - to prepare my historical novel The Physic Garden for publication both in paperback and as an eBook. I love the new cover which is from an old sampler embroidered by Janet McNiel in 1819. (And many thanks to Glasgow Museums for permission to use it.)

Saraband won the Saltire Society's inaugural Scottish Publisher of the Year award in 2013. You can read all about it here. But essentially, they judged that Saraband had 'responded to industry changes and moved Scottish authors to the heart of its business.' All true. And as far as I'm concerned they are the most helpfully collaborative publisher I have ever worked with.  A unique pleasure and I very much hope to continue working with them. Meanwhile, the paperback of The Physic Garden will be published in late March, with the eBook being available quite a bit sooner. I'll certainly keep you posted.

On this dark and dreary New Year's Day I've been sitting in a cosy room in our 200 year old cottage, drinking tea, watching old movies, making notes and plans for the coming year's work and occasionally falling asleep. It was a late night last night: an excellent Scottish Hogmanay party, with good food and champagne too. I'm not beating myself up about not putting all those plans into action until next Monday 6th January. I love this quiet time in the middle of winter where you feel justified in going into hibernation mode.

But before I sign off for tonight - here's a little piece of advice for all those friends and acquaintances who keep telling me that they 'want to write' but can't seem to find the time or motivation. This kind of advice is fairly rare for me. I'm always happy to talk to groups and classes about research and the writing process, but I tend to believe that if somebody really wants to write, then that's what they'll do. The late Pat Kavanagh once said to me that she thought people should only write something if they felt they couldn't bear NOT to write it, and I've found myself agreeing with her more and more as the years have gone by.  If a friend says to me that he or she wants to play the piano (something I can do reasonably well)  I'll chat about teachers, but if, a couple of years later, I find that the same friend has done nothing about it, it's no big deal. I'll just assume it was a passing fancy. She might well be perfectly happy playing Chopsticks or busking a tune for her own pleasure - and that's absolutely fine too.

But just because it's 1st January, and the time for resolutions and people are still telling me that they really want to write - here's a thought.

If you write only 500 words a day for  300 days of 2014 (which would give you a pretty hefty 65 days off!) you will have 150,000 words by this time next year. That equates to a doorstop of a novel, or a novel and a half, or three longish novellas, or two novels of reasonable length.

500 words is easy peasy. They don't have to be the best written 500 words in the history of literature. Just part of an ongoing story. Everyone can find the time for 500 words. You could get up an hour earlier, or go to bed an hour later or even - if you're an insomniac like I am, from time to time - get up, make a cup of tea and scribble or type for an hour. Just as long as you put your bum on the seat, put words on a page and go on doing it.

I've already written more than 500 words on this blog post. It didn't take long. In reality, you'll find yourself writing more than that, once you get going. You'll also find that life events sometimes intervene - but then you've always got those 65 days in hand. And you will probably find that once you get to the 80 or 90,000 word mark, (about 180 days) you'll want to stop and devote the remainder of the year to reworking and revising what you've written.

This should be a whole lot easier than trying to find the time and space to write a novel in a month, especially when you're new to the craft. But you'll still finish up with a manuscript by this time next year. And as with every other craft, practice makes perfect.

Whatever you decide to do - good luck with it - and a very happy and successful New Year to my friends and readers and all those lovely friends who are readers, which is pretty much all of them.








.


Lucky Sagittarius - Bird of Passage, Good Housekeeping and The Physic Garden. Lots Happening!

On special offer for 7 days!
It's that time of year again - my birthday, and it comes round hell of a fast these years. Mostly I'd prefer to forget about it. But this year, I have a lot to be thankful for, especially where my writing is concerned.

First though, let me flag up a birthday gift in reverse. I'm giving something away. Well, almost. Bird of Passage is going to be on a Kindle countdown deal (that means it's cheap, albeit not very cheerful) for the next seven days, on Amazon in the UK here and  in the US here. That's from 3rd - 9th December. If you find yourself reading this later on, I'm sorry you missed it but there will be others.  There's sometimes a small delay with implementing these deals, so if you go to the page today, the 3rd December, and find that it's still at full price, do try again later!

An Irish Industrial School
Bird of Passage is a powerful and occasionally explicit story of cruelty, loss and passionate obsession against all the odds. It is also a subtle homage to Wuthering Heights - a re-imagining rather than a retelling. It's a big dramatic read. The horrific background story of suffering in an Irish Industrial School and the way in which a child could be snatched from his mother is very current  - although I first wrote this novel some years ago, and started researching it even earlier. The more I read about the truth of what happened to so many people, the more appalled I became. It's a disturbing story, (it was disturbing to write, too) but many readers like it a lot even though it makes them cry.

Next on my list of exciting events is the publication of my small collection of short stories in eBook form by Hearst Magazines. You can find it here and pretty much on all other platforms as well. This is a small book, but a big step for me, because I'm in such very good company with some fine writers in this series of eBooks. In conjunction with this, the Good Housekeeping website has published a longish interview with me - 20 interesting questions for me to answer - and very enjoyable it was too! I hope you find the answers quite illuminating as well. You can find it on their Lifestyle pages along with all kinds of lovely Christmassy things.

Finally - and perhaps saving the best till last from my point of view, anyway - my new historical novel The Physic Garden is due to be published in March 2014 by Scottish Publisher of the Year, Saraband. (You can read all about their award here.)

I'm more than a little ecstatic about this, as you can imagine. Somebody asked me last week if it was my 'first book' and I had to reply, with a sigh, that no, it wasn't. I did a bit of arithmetic in my head and still got confused. But it will be my eighth full length novel, of which some were traditionally published, while some I published myself in eBook form. Besides that, there are a couple of published non fiction histories - one of them an enormous labour of love called God's Islanders -  a whole clutch of professionally produced and published stage plays, and several collections of short stories, most of which have been published in magazines. Plus a couple of poetry collections from way back. I sometimes get tired just thinking about it all.  But I'm the epitome of a 'hybrid' writer and I'm enjoying it.

I was speaking to a group of postgraduate Creative Writing students at the University of Glasgow last week. I had been invited to speak alongside a couple of representatives from the Society of Authors about the (considerable) benefits of joining. You sometimes walk a fine line between trying to tell people about the realities of  a career as a writer and your desire not to disillusion people. After all, most writers could no more give up writing than they could give up breathing. But I do try to tell people that a writing career is - with a very few lucky exceptions - a switchback, a massive game of snakes and ladders. One year you're up, the next you're down. But if you do find yourself at the bottom of a long and hideous snake, at least you know that there might be a ladder at the next throw.


Meanwhile, my experience with Saraband has been overwhelmingly positive. They produce the most beautiful books. Plus they gave me a brilliant editor. The novel didn't need much editing at all, thank goodness, but the points the editor made went straight to the heart of the few doubts I had and showed me how they might be addressed. I'd almost forgotten what a pleasurable experience it can be to work with a good editor, who loves your book.

The Physic Garden is a about friendship and  betrayal, about new developments in medicine and the tensions between 'physic' and surgery  - but above all, it's about the lifelong effects of treachery on William Lang, the narrator. I loved William. Still do. Even when I was writing the book, even though I was well aware that I was writing in the persona of an old man, remembering a long life, remembering the events of his youth in particular, it still felt oddly as though I were channelling him. I knew what he would say and how he would say it. I knew what he was thinking. It was one of those pieces of writing (I find it happens more with plays than with novels) where you read it afterwards and think 'I wonder where all that came from?'


The Old College of Glasgow University.

I'm told the proof copies are with the printer! Excited? Moi? You bet!

















The Curiosity Cabinet - On Special Offer Now!

Cover image by textile artist Alison Bell.
I wrote The Curiosity Cabinet a long time ago - in fact as I've already said elsewhere on this blog, it began life as a trilogy of radio plays inspired by the real historical story of Lady Grange (but very different from her story) and set on a small Scottish island a bit like my favourite Hebridean Island of Gigha. The plays involved two intertwined parallel love stories, one modern, one historical. But when I decided that I wasn't very happy with the modern day story in the plays, I started all over again with the novel. It was one of three books shortlisted for the Dundee Book Prize and it was subsequently published by Polygon. Lorraine Kelly read it and sent me a lovely note about it which I still treasure. Later, when it was out of print, I published it on Kindle myself, where it has been sellling very well ever since. It has had some fabulous reviews from readers here in the UK and in the US as well. My very favourite review was from a US reader who said that the writing was so tight you could 'bounce a quarter off of it.'

You know, as a poet and playwright as well as a novelist - not to mention as a reader too - I've never really subscribed to the notion that a book has to be over complicated and inaccessible in order to be good. I suppose what I'm always aiming for is an accessible and readable book which is nevertheless thought provoking. Some of my favourite writers - especially short story writers like William Trevor and Bernard MacLaverty - are clear and readable - but their work stays in your mind afterwards and works away like yeast, changing the way you think! That's always what I'm aiming for - but I know I don't always achieve it. And if you can read any of my books and say that you've enjoyed them, then that's good enough for me.

The landscapes of the Curiosity Cabinet were inspired by the wonderful little island of Gigha which I've been visiting for years. Even the ferry in the novel is very like the Gigha ferry.

As for the historical story - well, as far as I know, there is no Manus McNeill, sadly, though there were and still are lots of McNeills in the Western Isles and some of them may have been called Manus and may even have been a little like my lovely, irascible but honourable hero. But there is an ancient grave in the old ruined kirk at Kilchattan on Gigha and somehow, in my mind, I always associate it with my fictional Manus although I know that it's much older than the hero of my novel and even though it's nothing like the grave described in the book.

All the same, every single  time I visit the island, I go to the old kirk and leave a little posy of wild flowers on his grave. I can't explain why I feel the need to do this, but I do.



The Curiosity Cabinet is on special offer on Kindle now and for the next five days. You'll find it for 99p here on Amazon UK and also at a reduced price on Amazon.com in the US.


Something Magical About My Kindle

These guys think so too.

Right from the start, let me say that I love paper books. Always have, always will. We have books in every room in the house. Too many, really. Periodically, I'll have a clear out and send a few boxes off to my charity shop of choice, but they creep back in again, especially non fiction books that I come across and know I'll need for reference: illustrated books about textiles and Scottish history and folklore and cookery and gardening books and lots more.

I'm currently reading a big, brand new hardback book. It's an extremely good book, but I'm not going to name it here, because that doesn't matter. It could be the best book in the whole wide world and I would still feel the same about it. How I feel about it is this.

The very peculiar smell of time.
It's a really beautiful, well produced artefact. Contrary to popular myth, it doesn't actually smell of anything at all, other than a faint odour of new paper, (but then so does bog roll). Actually, I think old books smell lovely, but then I think antique paisley shawls smell lovely too, have been known to bury my face in these gorgeous old textiles and breathe deeply - the slightly stale and very peculiar smell of time and use and dust and old scent and ... well, you know. Not everyone feels the same, but I don't care.

Back to books. This book in particular. It is driving me nuts. Not the content, which is excellent, but the delivery system. I keep wishing it was on my Kindle or at least as a nice, soft, bendy paperback. It may be beautiful, it IS beautiful, but it's also big, heavy, unwieldy, spiky at the corners and difficult to handle. The book itself keeps getting in the way of my undoubted pleasure in the contents. I read a lot in bed, but to cope with this one, I have to prop it on a pillow in front of me, and even then it keeps sliding about. The weight of it sets off my carpel tunnel syndrome and I get pins and needles and have to hang my hands over the edge of the bed to recover.

I'll finish it, because it's so good, and I'll treasure it and I may even want to read it again. But as soon as it's available in paperback or as an eBook, I'll probably buy another copy. Wrestling with this object made me think again about eBooks, and the reading I do on my Kindle, made me think about the uses of books and why we might want them in a particular form. As a part time dealer in antique textiles, I'm all too horribly aware of the transience of fragile things, the need to preserve some important or beautiful objects against time and change. Similarly, some books are so crammed with wisdom that you fear for their transience and want to see them in as robust a form as possible, disseminated as widely as possible.

But as far as reading, experiencing, absorbing the contents is concerned (which is, after all, the real purpose of writing and publishing) there is undoubtedly something magical about my Kindle.

In the way that a really good radio play, well acted and produced, seems to be transferred straight from the mind of the playwright to the mind of the listener (and can therefore be uniquely disturbing, when the themes are distressing or highly emotive) - there is something incredibly immediate about the experience of reading a really good, intense, well written piece of fiction on a Kindle or other e-reader or tablet.

Over the past year or so, I've been doing more and more reading on my Kindle and have noticed that the experience can seem more intense and more immediate than anything I've experienced for a long time. Maybe I've been lucky in my choice of reading matter. But it seems to me to have something to do with the medium itself. I can only think it's because there is so little to get in the way of the words and images and ideas. I've found myself more intensely involved with fiction than ever before, even dreaming about the books I'm reading, about the events and the characters - vivid, disturbing dreams in which I'm the character in the novel, or I'm witnessing and participating in the events in the book. It reminds me a bit of the way it used to be when I was very young and stories were so fresh and new and exciting that I felt as though I were completely absorbed in this amazing new world. I love it.

I'd be really interested to know if other readers feel the same way!

Orange Blossom Love and other stories ...

Another lovely cover image from Michael Doig
I've been so busy with all kinds of writing over the past few weeks that I've hardly had a spare moment to update this blog. Here in the West of Scotland, we're in that time between seasons when the trees are beautiful - especially the rowans - but the days are shortening all the time. Soon our clocks will be going back an hour and then the nights will seem very long - and very dark.

BUT I've been cheering myself up with working on the first in a series of unashamedly romantic novels, set largely in the beautiful Canary Isles. And really wishing I was sitting on the deck of a catamaran in the sunshine. But if I can't do that, then the next best thing is to write about the islands, and dream about them. And share some of those dreams with readers.


This all began many years ago as a short story called Sardine Burial which - coincidentally enough - has just been republished in eBook form by the excellent Hearst Magazine Company: one of four short stories in a new mini collection of my stories, available on all ebook platforms - but you can find it here on Amazon in the UK and here on Amazon in the US. I love the way Hearst are embracing short stories in this form - mainly because I'm a big fan of the short story myself, not just as a writer, but as a reader.

I experimented with Sardine Burial as a radio play - it was actually produced on BBC R4 years ago - but I really wanted to write it as a novel. Its first incarnation was published and pretty much sank without trace. I'm quite glad, because it wasn't ever the way I really wanted it to be. It's a romantic story, no doubt about it. And why not? But what I really wanted to write was a novel about two people from quite different backgrounds, who fall in love and marry in haste. What happens next? Do they repent at leisure, as the old adage would have us believe? So I went back to the beginning and began all over again. Especially with my hero - lovely Luis - who plays the guitar and sings - and cooks, too. OK, OK, he's a man in a million. But he has his faults. As you'll find out if you read the book.

That's what I've been writing about in Orange Blossom Love.  (Try THIS LINK  instead, if you're in the US!)  This is one of the more sensuous and unashamedly romantic pieces of writing I've ever done. It's a very grown up love story. And I'm afraid it does end on a bit of a cliff-hanger. There was no way round it. You'll see what I mean when you get there! But I'm hoping to be able to get Part 2, Bitter Oranges, out on Kindle in time for Christmas. Or very soon after.

My only worry is that there is an important - and quite different - project which might just possibly get in the way. I'll tell you a bit more about that later because it's very exciting too and it will have to take priority for a while.. But if I manage my time properly, I should be able to do both. And maybe winter in Scotland will be a very good time to visit the gorgeous, sunny Canary Isles, even if it's only in my imagination! On the other hand, Bitter Oranges is set partly in Glasgow. So I might just have to make do with Luis, who brings his own brand of sunshine with him! Always has. Always will.


The Curiosity Cabinet on Pinterest


I've been a convert to Pinterest for a while. It's a lovely, easy site to use, and I can never visit it without a little lifting of the heart.  Maybe because it's good displacement activity. (Well, it is!) Maybe it's also because I have a very visual imagination. When I'm working on a novel or a play, I tend to surround myself with all kinds of inspirational images, pictures that help to fire my imagination, even when I'm feeling in the doldrums. Pinterest is a nice addition to those resources: pictures of landscapes and food, textiles, interiors, costumes and all kinds of things. Pictures of heroes, too.

I now find I use it quite a lot when I have a work in progress - I'm using it with my Canary Island trilogy at the moment. One of the good things about the site is that it isn't very time consuming, or it needn't be. You can just go there briefly, have a little browse, pin a picture, be intrigued or inspired and get back to work.  Or you can spend hours on it, especially if you follow the pictures back to their original websites. But you don't have to.

Sometimes, like now, I've been moved to create a Pinterest board for a work that was done and dusted some time ago - purely for fun. I've just done it for my novel The Curiosity Cabinet and you can see the board here. Most readers will have their own ideas about the landscape of the novel - and the embroidered box of the title. But all the same, I thought it might be nice for readers to see some of the images that inspired it.

The Curiosity Cabinet is a novel which has had a long and complicated life. It started out as a trilogy of radio plays, was totally rewritten as a novel, shortlisted for a book prize, published by Polygon, and then went out of print but not before it had been released as an unabridged audio reading and abridged (without the sex and swearing - not that there is a LOT of it - but very nicely done!) for the People's Friend. It had been so well reviewed, had so many readers who had taken the time and trouble to tell me how much they liked it, that it became one of my first Kindle books. It had a new and very beautiful cover by my friend, textile artist Alison Bell. And in 2014, I plan to re release it in paperback, via Amazon's Createspace.

I've been visiting the little Hebridean Isle of Gigha for many years now - I even wrote a history of the place called God's Islanders for Birlinn - and I love it. The Garve of the novel isn't entirely Gigha and other islands are certainly available! Coll, for instance. But the landscapes of Gigha definitely inspired the landscapes of Garve, past and present, in the novel. They went on to inspire the landscapes of the anonymous Scottish island in Bird of Passage too - but differently. Maybe I'll do a dedicated Pinterest board for that novel too, in due course.

I'll be adding a few more pictures to the Curiosity Cabinet board over the next few weeks. This is the landscape of the novel - when I visualise the film of the book in my head this is the kind of thing I see. Well, a girl can dream, can't she?