I wonder most of the time about past or present, realising my writing attitude are definitely changing, whereupon the first completion of illiterate attempts to imitate a literrary genius, I demanded my family read my work as if it was a news flash from an atom bomb just dropped on London. Now it is all very different, my characters are all my best friends( the nice ones any way)the town in which they live is all a big secret, draping the created world around my shoulders almost like protective cape.
I have had one book pubished, amazingly when I received the first copy, noting something I did not like, took direct steps to my study(a renovated coal cellar)to alter the damn thing; suddenly realising that was not possible for the work was no longer mine. My world was now a complete through road,even a rat run for people's minds to run riot over once protected environment, sad isn't it!!!

Well, today I sent off the very last of my Advance Review Copies to those interested in reviewing my book. I wish I had printed more but so far the responses have been positive so I suppose it is okay that I only printed the amount that I did. The actual book should be here in a month¡¦s time anyway, so that is good news. ƒº I just recently submitted my files to Amazon¡¦s Search Inside, so depending on how long it takes them to process the book, you should be able to see more than the cover soon! I also submitted my book to Barnes and Nobel for inclusion on their website, but it sounds like there is a significant wait period before they accept or decline your book. So now it¡¦s just a matter of waiting. In the mean time¡Xbetween schoolwork¡XI am working on ideas for my second book in the ¡§Laura¡¨ series. I am really excited because I will get to go and visit her in Bavaria in the springtime. I will need to take plenty of reference photos of her because she is growing so quickly! I¡¦d like the two other books I have planned to take place when she¡¦s still a child. There are so many things to think about¡Xbut that¡¦s what makes it fun and challenging. Well, that¡¦s all for now. I will let you know of any upcoming news!

Amber
http://www.chrysalispress.com

Is it just me or are Mondays in the winter season becoming increasingly wearisome? I’d like to start a campaign to stop them altogether – I’m sure it would be much more beneficial for all if we could just go straight to Tuesday, or even Wednesday. Oh yes that would be better. I wish! Mind you, the feeling probably isn’t made any better by the fact that this is the first working day since the dark nights have come upon us. Groan.

This morning, I muddled through the small collection of emails waiting for me at work though, sadly, none of them have been from the Chair of the Induction Group meeting I minuted at lunchtime. So I had to go into the wretched thing with nothing but draft papers and a bright smile. Hey ho, so much for the organised professional, eh. Still, at least the sandwiches were nice ...

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Up at the crack of dawn today to go birdwatching in Pagham Harbour. Goodness me, but it was wild and windswept in the south. Not to mention the rain. The first bird-hide we came to was distinctly strange as it was set on one side of a busy road with the lake on the other side. Cue cries of: Oh look, is that a redshank? No, it's a lorry. No, a bus! It was also tricky when you actually tried to open the window to get a clearer view as the Force 9 gale took your breath away and the sound of the traffic drowned out the noise of the birds. Ah well ...

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Having got the incentive to write again, juggling time is a pain. But, they say, writers will find time. My time is around 5.45 am. Writing ideas down in long hand. Then from 8.00 it's duty time until mid afternoon.

Dark ideas come in Autumn and stay until Spring. A writer friend now living in Yorkshire says her muse was the sea. Now she has no sea views and her writing, she says, has changed from her usual uplifting, humorous style to down beat.

Here is a picture of me posing unashamedly next to the statue of Pan at Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s ancestral home (see In the Footprints of Poets and Thieves blog entry). I might use it as an author photo later on. The area amongst the trees reminded me of how parts of Narnia might look (one can almost imagine the snow) but it was inspirational for a location in my own novel as well.

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I've been reading a thread on a forum about what makes 'good' prose. Needless to say, the camps quickly established: 'fancy, pretentious tosh' versus 'banal, lowest-common-denominator crap' versus... No, I won't go on, you've heard it all a hundred times. So instead I've come over here to sort out what I think, and, of course, it depends what you mean by 'good'.

The basic level of 'good' prose, it seems to me, is 'functional'. It does the job for the book it's making: conveys the story and characters adequately, doesn't baffle the reader, keeps them reading to the end. And then there's 'good' as in a bit better than that, conveying things more than adequately, getting the reader's imagination working so we 'get' things more clearly and immediately, but also with a wider (deeper?) sense of their significance.

But there are a lot more 'goods' than that, I think...




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A lazy morning today - and goodness me but it's about time we had one of those. They don't come round often enough. As a result, Lord H and I had a fashionably late breakfast, accompanied by the fashionably late (these days) post. I was delighted to see that the latest edition of the Woking Theatre programme had arrived which tells me all the exciting plays I can see next year (I'm a Friend of the theatre, so I always get the programme early).

However, I fear that the Woking play planner (whoever he or she may be) has obviously been at the Pimm's a little too often or may even have been nobbled by a rival theatre company, as everything (everything, dahlings, everything) is a ruddy musical. What is this?? Am I in the twilight zone?? Must I don my glitter and ballgown and launch my top notes every time I want to go out these days? (A scary thought indeed and enough to clear the boards for sure.) But I jest not - here is next year's programme on the main stage ...

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I must say how moved I was last night whilst watching "The Alan Johnston Story" on TV. It was both electrifying and astonishingly thoughtful. He - and those included in the programme - came across as very human and very honest. It strikes me that so much of what we see or read or experience these days seems to work against the fact of our humanity, and it was refreshing to watch a programme that, at the end of the day, entirely celebrated it. I suspect it may be the most godly (if I dare use that word) thing I've come up against for a long time. Here's hoping there are more of the same, and in other creative fields also, soon. And, if you didn't watch it, and it's repeated at some stage, I can thoroughly recommend you try to catch it ...

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It has been said that the Age we live in, here in 2007, is the Age of Anxiety. It's tempting to agree. I'm not sure who decides the names of the "Ages". Similarly, I'm unsure who decides it's Save The Whale Week or Save the Wilderness Year or Be Kind To Your Neighbour Day. However, categorising periods of time and giving them a name can be helpful. It gives me boundaries within which I can contemplate events that happened and their impact on the world today.

I'm currently contemplating the period between 1700 and 1900. It's a period of fascination for me. This period has three names, that is the Age of Reason, followed and overlapped by the Age of Enlightenment, then followed and overlapped by the Age of Exploration.

It is within the boundaries of the Age of Exploration that Allan Cunningham's Time Line resides. He was born in 1791 and breathed his last breath in a cottage in Sydney's Botanic Gardens in 1839. It was a time when individuals allowed themselves and were allowed by others to separate their reasoning from the dogma of religion. They used reason, imagination and experimentation to find the truth about the world they lived in, resulting in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. I don't think Charles Darwin and Allan Cunningham ever met, however, they were literally "ships that passed in the night". They would have known of each other.

Matching historical events, to Allan Cunningham's journey through time, gives me little moments of delight. Knowing lends texture and colour to his story and makes it easier to understand and absorb. It places the man in the context of his culture, my culture, "western" culture.

I've recently realised that a comprehensive Time Line is a chronological story told in snippets. When you put all the snippets together you could have a story.

Aha!

This realisation has been a small Aha! moment, it just arrived as I wrote this blog. Let me explain. For quite a while I've been overwhelmed by the idea of writing my book "The King's Botanical Collector" (http://www.artuccino.com/Allan_Cunningham/Kings_Botanical_Collector/000_Preface.html). In a space at the back of my mind I doubt my ability to, in the words of that tenacious heroic historian Ida Lee, "do Allan Cunningham's story the justice it deserves". It's a great story. Visually wonderful. I can see it as the anchor upon which a good documentary filmmaker could display the wonders of the Australian landscape and its flora and fauna. Possibly somewhere down the track, after years of research and development my work will be discovered and the story will be told visually and well. There I go dreaming again.

Coming back to earth and planting my practical methodical feet firmly on the ground my thoughts return to the Allan Cunningham Time Line. One little step, leading to another little step, adding up to a lot of little steps equals something meaningful. Hopefully.

Shoot for the moon, even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.

View a sneak preview of Allan Cunningham's Time Line in its very early development stages at http://www.artuccino.com/Allan_Cunningham/Time_Line.php

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