The family member who declines to be named…

…is looking after Hepworth Towers, the cat and my email, while Dave and I abscond on the cut:

So there will be pretty slim pickings on the blog for a while.

Here is part of Dave’s packing list (for your amusement):

Happy holidays!

Come along and say hello!

You’ve seen the front cover of my new book - BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU - but not the back cover. So here is the blurb  -

Frances has been married to Sol since the beginning of time. He is eccentric and difficult to live with, but she finds him endearing and very funny, even while wanting to strangle him with his own jogging bottoms. Now, something threatens to split them apart. Frances wants one thing and Sol wants another, and there is no way to compromise. But I told you last year that I loved you is a portrait of a mature marriage at a crossroads – intimate, funny, tender and honest.

“clever, funny, subtle, wry, sad and uplifting all at once…Sue Hepworth writes thoughtfully and insightfully, and with such tenderness and humour” Judith Murray, literary agent

I’m having a launch party at Scarthin Books on June 9th, 6pm -7.30 pm and it would be great of you could come along and say hello and help me celebrate.

I’m also going to be signing copies of the new book in three branches of Waterstone’s on the following days:

Chesterfield Waterstone’s    June 11th, 2pm - 4pm.

Sheffield Waterstone’s         June 18th, 11 am - 3pm.

Derby Waterstone’s              June 25th, 11am -3pm.

“Authors are trying to sell their books to readers. Publishers are trying to sell their books to retailers.”

Do you remember the agent who liked my writing very much but said she couldn’t sell my book to a publisher? You know I’ve been telling you there are loads of mid-list authors with loyal readers who have been dropped by their publishers?  Well, read about this one who has been shortlisted for three prizes, won one, has several books already in print, and whose agent tried unsuccessfully for two years to get her a publisher for her fourth book. Now the author, Linda Gillard, has given up and is self-publishing an e-book. Go, Linda!

An exploding brain

It is 7 a.m. and i have already had a half hour discussion with Dave about the design of my posters for my Waterstone’s events. He is creative and adventurous with design. I am conservative and have too many other things to think about.

A good friend emailed me yesterday to say she loved the cover of my book, and told me other news, and I found myself writing back - “I’m sorry to be so brief, but I don’t email for pleasure any more.” What a poser I sounded.

What I meant was - “My brain is frazzled with trying to organise so many different things at once and trying to contact so many different people about so many different things” –

• working out how to upload an image of the book to the entry on Amazon;
• persuading the wholesalers to stock it;
• amending the book details on Nielsen (the definitive books database. Nielsen are in charge of ISBNs);
• emailing radio stations and journalists;
• writing begging letters to famous people, asking them to read my book and give me a plug for the cover;
• posting pre-release copies to people who actually want them;
• etc;
• etc;
• etc;   

I am a writer, and not a natural publicist, office manager, accounts clerk, publisher, or techie.  But then, three years ago I couldn’t play the saxophone, or balance on a slackline, could I?

I love the book, I believe in the book, and I will do my damnedest to sell it.

Panacea

Yesterday morning…

Sue(lying in bed): I feel sick.

Dave: Why don’t you go downstairs and look at your box of books? That will make you feel better.

Sue: I don’t need to. I have one here on my bedside table I can fondle.

Yay! They’re here! My pre-release copies have arrived!

And here’s a close-up:

Don’t you just love it? Don’t I have some clever children? And thank you, Ella, for the great idea!

 

Spring comes late to our lane

When people ask me if I like living here – in the Peak District - I  always say “I loathe it in the winter and I love it in the summer. Winter is the price you have to pay for the other nine months of the year.” Well, now it’s payback time!

My slackline is back up on the front lawn, and this is my favourite time for gardening, when the weather is mild enough to work outside, and the weeds have not yet got a hold so I feel optimistic about finally fettling things.

Every morning lately I’ve been sitting in my study working on my marketing and PR campaign for the new book, but yesterday I kept rushing outside and throwing myself down on the bench, shutting my eyes and turning my face to the sky, and saying, “Come and get me, sun!”

I had to go to the post office, which is in the next village, so I nipped there on my bike. I passed the sheep and lambs in the field at the end of our lane, but they weren’t near enough to the wall to photograph. But down the hill and over the wall amongst the trees, there was:

What joy. The other day we saw tiny piglets scurrying around in the mud. Yesterday they were lying with their mother on the straw in the ark, and I didn’t have my zoom.

Here are some shots of the lambs from another evening:

Twitter, Catullus and me

Isaac (my son) and Diane, a writing friend, persuaded me to join up to Twitter in February and since then I have tweeted over a hundred times.

Am I pleased?

Is it worth the bother?

This jury is out.

I can see if your friends and colleagues are on Twitter, it would be fun and/or helpful to be on Twitter, too. You can share ideas and jokes and useful links to stuff on the net. You can have a running conversation throughout your day. Unfortunately, apart from said writing friend above, not one of my friends is on Twitter, so I tweet in an ocean of strangers.

On the other hand I do like seeing what Isaac is talking about when he’s awake. And he does post links to his wonderful photographs via Twitter – including ones like this of my granddaughter, Lux.

But other joys on Twitter are few. Yes, there are some links to interesting stuff on the net: I wouldn’t have found about Authors for Japan if I hadn’t been on Twitter. And Samira Ahmed of Channel 4 News signposts current discussions in the media that I’m interested in.

But apart from my Californian family, the one tweeter who really adds something to my day is someone calling himself @arjunbasu. He tweets a lot, and almost all his tweets are vignettes. Here are some examples:

This is some deep valley, he says, and this is one obvious statement too many, but they are alone in the wilderness, so she merely says, Yes

He cuts a tomato while whistling Hava Nagila. I don't know you anymore, she says. And he thinks she's really talking about his new underwear

He woke up and went to work in the kitchen and then she woke up and he said, Pancakes? and she said, But I like to be grumpy in the morning.

It was last call. He was stuck in the bathroom without toilet paper. His cell phone's battery was empty. So he started thinking up his will.

And where does Catullus fit in?  The 140 character constraint makes Twitter a place designed for epigrams. I am sure that Catullus and Martial would have tweeted. Why don’t more people use Twitter to say something clever or witty? Who bloody cares that @Michael43 has just got home from the gym, or that @sarah123 is eating chocolate fridge cake?

Busy, busy, busy

I’m really busy working on my PR campaign and although I keep getting ideas for the blog – e.g. Would Catullus have used Twitter? – I haven’t got time to write these posts. I’m sorry. Please will you make do for now with this old Times piece which I showed (new parent) Isaac at the weekend, and which he enjoyed?

What the Green Paper left out

The Green Paper on parental leave misses the point. Parents don’t need maternity leave or paternity leave. Tired, stressed, burnt-out parents don’t need leave to see their children, they need leave from their children. If only the government would issue parental respite vouchers along with Child Benefit, parents could take short sabbaticals from parenting at those flashpoints when the going gets too tough.

Think of the early infant years when you stumble zombie-like through a chain of frazzled days and sleepless nights, measuring out your life with feeds and nappy changes. Wouldn’t three nights of parental respite put your body and mind back together, remind you who you were, and also why you wanted a baby in the first place ?

Later, when there are two under fives in the house, and you’ve just vicariously suffered two consecutive bouts of chicken pox, closely followed by 48 hour sickness and diarrhoea, you could cash in one of your vouchers. A stimulating city break or a weekend away in unfettered fresh air would give you the strength to carry on.

Once sick children are past the easy stage of being feverish, weak and pathetic, and have reached the downstairs-in-the-sitting-room-playing-with-Lego-phase, it’s wearing. They are well enough to be crabby, but not well enough to have a friend to play. Being cooped up together with no dilution in each other’s company for seven hours every day can make you both feel pretty murderous, no matter how much you love each other. After several weeks of my son’s tonsillitis and quinsy I remember stamping down the cellar steps to fetch coal, saying “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him” and on returning with a full bucket found him behind the door whispering “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.” If someone had offered me parental respite of just two days we would have both leaped for joy.

Different people have different strengths: a parent may sail through one childhood phase, only to be floored by the next. I find new born babies irresistible, but when they get to four months old I find them boring, and dream of putting them in a time capsule, to get them out again when they are old enough to talk.

There are some parents who do not feel up to making costumes for the nativity play at junior school, or fiddling with all those Blue Peter models. They shrink from the thought of a dozen pairs of greasy hands when it’s their turn on the class cooking rota, and they would rather sign up for a course in lion taming than help on a school trip.

Other parents are a dab hand with all that primary stuff but find it too cold and tedious standing on the touch-line for pubescent hockey and football matches, and too nerve racking watching their sons risk paraplegia by playing in the school rugby team. They also get worn down by a house awash with swirling hormones, a fridge that needs restocking daily, conversations conducted at ten decibels, providing a 24 hour taxi service, and fielding phone calls from teachers pursuing missing coursework.

My personal current blackspot is cooking for a teenage vegetarian who doesn’t like vegetables. I love cooking, but as far as making healthy, balanced meals for someone who only wants junk food is concerned, I’m burnt out. I’m battle weary from arguing with someone who at ten paces can recognise and reject anything containing a shred of fibre or an infinitesimal trace of a vitamin. Fights over meeting GCSE coursework deadlines are bad enough - who needs extra grief ?

I’ve shot through my diligent, dutiful catering phase, and serve up instant junk vegetarian every other day, boosted by synthetic vitamins and minerals. If only my innovative parental respite system had been in operation, I might have been able to sustain the provision of healthy food until he left for University, and worried about his own baked beans.

Look, the system needs fine tuning but it doesn’t have to be too complicated. Each parent would have a set number of vouchers for each year of the child’s life, up to the age of eighteen. These vouchers could then be cashed in with pensioners who became registered providers of parental respite, and they in turn would be reimbursed by the Benefits Agency. The system would thus be doubly beneficial. It would boost pensioners’ income as well as relieving pressure on families.

No doubt the Benefits Agency would want to evaluate how parents used their vouchers. Parents new to the job would probably practise spend-as-they-grow, whereas more experienced parents might save their vouchers and have one long decadent splurge during the most arduous phase of adolescence. During a lengthy happy-families phase an insouciant parent might altruistically donate a few vouchers to the PTA fund raising auction. A desperate parent might organise after dinner poker with vouchers as the stakes.

Those especially blessed people born with huge reserves of patience and deep wellsprings of parental instinct may find that their children leave home before all the vouchers are spent. You can just imagine the classified ad: “For sale: cot, box of assorted Lego, inline skates size 5, Nintendo, and fifty parental respite vouchers. Will separate.

© Sue Hepworth/Times Newspapers 2000

Perfection

Thinking about perfection and imperfection with regards to the copy of my book that came the other day, I remembered this piece I had in The Times some years ago:

The idea of perfection

Reading the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection has made me consider the thorniness of liking things just so. I loved the book, but in my Picador edition there were no quotation marks used to enclose the direct speech. And I hated that.

Popular culture abounds with characters with fine discrimination, or obsessive pickiness, depending on your point of view. Remember Meg Ryan as Sally in When Harry Met Sally? “I’d like apple pie a la mode. But I’d like the pie heated and I don’t want the ice cream on top I want it on the side. And I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream, but only if it’s real. If it’s out of a can, then nothing.” You could say she was picky.

But if there were a team event for pickiness in the Olympics, my family would get the Gold medal, every time. At fifteen my brother was ironing his own shirts, because my mother didn’t do it well enough. Now if you wash up for him he will tell you to turn the teaspoons upside down on the draining board so that they drain efficiently. I am picky about everything. So picky that last time I had breakfast in bed, my husband - who can never remember precisely what I like, but who wanted me to enjoy the treat - brought me three different mugs for my tea, three spreads, and three different types of jam. My father, a Grand Master of pickiness, will spurn every kipper that isn’t from Craster. But if you send him one from that blessed haven you give him exquisite pleasure, and he will be sweet for days.

At least you can be sure of giving great pleasure to high maintenance types if you make the effort and get it right. Those people who say “I’m easy,” or “I don’t mind,” can be impossible to please. How can you possibly know how to delight those colourless children who come round to tea, and who “don’t mind” whether they have fish fingers or pizza or baked beans on toast?

Pickiness becomes truly unbearable, though, when it extends to a delusion that other people want to know your opinion about everything on every occasion even when you haven’t been asked. This week I am dreading my father coming to stay, and casting his critical eye over my treasured garden, because I know he will make derogatory comments about how I have pruned the blackcurrants or let blackspot infest my roses. When someone picks at an expression of your creativity, that’s when it hurts the most.

So if someone actually asks your opinion about something which they care deeply, and in which you can see an imperfection, what do you tell them ? If they have just spent three months stitching a tapestry and they ask you if you think that it matters that they ran out of blue and had to use another dye lot and can you see the difference, and does it matter ? If you can, and it does, what do you say?

When planting our new garden my husband asked exactly where I wanted him to place the silver birch tree, so I marked the spot in the ground with a stick. “We work to fine tolerances here,” he said. When I viewed the tree later from the kitchen, I thought it was nine inches too far to the right, but I bit my tongue and said nothing. I was rewarded for this uncharacteristic forbearance when in the evening he looked through the window and decided that the tree needed moving, about nine inches to the left. Such miracles are rare.

I know I’m difficult. But being the picker can be just as uncomfortable as being the pickee. It is not easy when someone you love has just sanded and varnished a wooden floor for you, and every time you sit down on the sofa you notice a white paint stain (he missed) under the varnish.

I do find it helps to remind myself that in some cultures craftsmen deliberately include a mistake in their work, because only God can create things perfect. It also helps to read the motto my husband gave me “Perfection is our aim. We must learn to tolerate excellence.”

© Sue Hepworth/Times Newspapers 2011

Did you know that…?

…the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) passed a segregation bill last week. Palestinian Israelis are not allowed to live in Jewish localities built on land confiscated from them. Government policy also makes sure they cannot build on the little private land that was left in their ownership. This recently arrived in my Inbox and I wanted to share it with you.

From Gaza to Jerusalem: JVP Statement on the Escalation of Violence, March 25, 2011 Any act of violence, especially one against civilians, marks a profound failure of human imagination and causes a deep and abiding trauma for all involved. In mourning the nine lives lost in Gaza and the one life lost in Jerusalem this week, we reject the pattern of condemning the deaths of Israelis while ignoring the deaths of Palestinians. We do not discriminate. One life lost is one life too many--whether Palestinian or Israeli. Within the context of 44 years of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, in the past two years (January 31, 2009 to January 31, 2011, starting just after Operation Cast Lead), over a thousand Palestinians have been made homeless by home demolitions, hundreds have been unlawfully detained, and over 150 men, women and children have been killed by the IDF and settlers, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.(1) Many acres of Palestinian land have been taken and orchards uprooted by armed settlers. Countless hours have been lost at checkpoints, often fruitlessly, while Palestinians attempted to get medical care, jobs, and access to education. One and a half million Gazans have been living with a limited food supply, lack of electricity and dangerously toxic sewage. This is occupation: daily, persistent acts of structural violence. All in the service of a government that constantly expands illegal Israeli settlements on land that rightfully belongs to Palestinians. These acts don't reach our headlines because they are so habitual, so we learn not to see them. But Palestinians live them and their profound consequences everyday, and we must keep that in mind, even as we ponder the terrible events of the past few weeks:(2) A person or persons, (we don't know who), bombed a bus stop in Jerusalem, injuring 30 and killing 1 Israeli civilian; An Israeli bombing killed 3 children and an older man in Gaza; A person or persons, (we don't know who), murdered 5 members of a family, including three children, in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank; The Israeli government suddenly tightened the siege of Gaza and escalated military attacks, killing a total of 11 Palestinians and injuring more than 40 since mid-March;(3) Palestinians fired over 50 shells and rockets from Gaza into civilian areas in southern Israel. These terrible acts of violence remind us that to end the Israeli occupation our best hope is supporting the inspiring nonviolent Palestinian movement for change, in the form of unarmed protests every Friday in places like Bil’in, Ni'lin, Sheikh Jarrah, and the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. This is a movement that respects life, that is part and parcel of the nonviolent democratic people's movements we have been inspired by throughout the Arab world, that welcomes the solidarity and support of Israeli and international believers in equality and universal human rights. This is a movement that fundamentally subverts the logic of armies, revenge-fueled “price tags”, and armed struggle. And it is a movement that may well do what no other government to date has done-- pressure Israel to be accountable to international law and therefore help create conditions for truly meaningful negotiations. Because it is so powerful, it is no surprise that the right to engage in nonviolent resistance, a foundational component of any functioning democracy, is under attack in Israel. Human rights activists are being detained or imprisoned. Bills to criminalize the BDS movement, or harass human rights organizations, are working their way through the Knesset. Just this week: The very act of publicly commemorating the Nakba, a crucial nonviolent act of Palestinian remembrance, was essentially criminalized in Israel by the Knesset.(4)The Knesset also passed a law allowing small communities in the Galilee and Negev to discriminate against anyone wanting to reside there who does not fit in with the community’s “socio-cultural” character.(5) The Knesset also held hearings to assess whether the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street was sufficiently pro-Israel.(6) The IDF announced a new military intelligence-gathering unit solely dedicated to monitoring international left-wing peace and human rights groups that the army sees as a threat to Israel. The department will work closely with government ministries.(7) Dozens of Israeli soldiers raided the home of Bassem Tamimi, Head of the nonviolent Nabi Saleh Popular Committee , and beat his wife and daughter while arresting him presumably on charges of "incitement" and "organizing illegal demonstrations."(8) As the Israeli government increasingly deploys anti-democratic measures and military repression, we at Jewish Voice for Peace are redoubling our efforts to support the best hope- a nonviolent Palestinian-led resistance movement in which we all work together to nurture life, justice and equality. We invite you to join the movement. (1) B'tselem: Fatalities after operation "Cast Lead" (2) The Guardian, March 23: Israeli-Palestinian tensions: a timeline (3) Alternative Information Center, March 23: Israel's Military Escalation in Gaza (4) Jerusalem Post, March 23: Nakba Bill passes Knesset in third reading (5) +972 Magazine, March 22: Knesset passes segregation bill (6) New York Times, March 24: U.S. Group Stirs Debate On Being "Pro-Israel" (7) Ha'aretz, March 21: Military Intelligence monitoring foreign left-wing organizations  and +972 Magazine, March 22: Military Intelligence monitors "de-legitimization" (8) Popular Struggle, March 24, 2011: Israeli Soldiers arrest Bassem Tamimi, Coordinator of Nabi Saleh Popular Committee

I have it and it’s perfect

I have the new approval copy in my hot little hands. It arrived yesterday. It is 99.999% perfect. I love it, love it, love it. But today I have to part with it.

I promised to send a pre-release copy to the local rep of one of the big book wholesalers, so she could read it and approve it. Getting the wholesaler to stock it would be a massive breakthrough, so I must sacrifice the baby.

Oh oh – how can I part with it? I shall have to wait another ten days for its 50 identical siblings to arrive at my door.

Simple pleasures

We drink a lot of milk at Hepworth Towers. Or rather, Dave drinks a lot of milk at Hepworth Towers. He drinks gallons of full cream milk. I drink gills of semi-skimmed. We don’t have a milkman but we do have a village dairy. The farm just off the main street has a tiny porch with a fridge where you can go and collect milk, and leave your money for it on the stone slab.

Even though it is other people in the house who drink all the milk, it always seems to be me who sees we’ve run out. Why is that? It’s because my semi-skimmed begins to diminish at a mysterious and alarming rate. When the male members of the household can’t get their hard stuff they resort to using my “gnats' piss.” So then guess who it is who goes to the dairy, steaming and grumbling under her breath?

But as soon as I arrive, my bad temper lifts. The smells from the farm transport me back to my childhood. It’s like an aromatic magic potion and it works every time. I step inside the porch and put my coins on the slab, and open the fridge, and the farmer steps out of his kitchen or the bottling room and asks me how many I want, and finds me the old fashioned bottles with the fat necks, because he knows that’s the kind that we like. We exchange meaningless pleasantries about the weather and I step outside and sniff the air again – oh, those smells - and then I go home, a better woman.

“No Sue, you absolutely mustn’t email the printer!”

You remember I received my approval (pre-release) copy of the book last Saturday? And that it had a gloss cover when I had asked for a matt one? Well, I spent the weekend reading the text again and found a dozen mistakes, and on Monday sent a corrected PDF of the text to the printer along with some requests about the cover -  “matt, please, and a deeper turquoise”  and “please will you slot in that symbol on the title-verso page that shows the paper comes from managed forests?” Then I sat back thinking – Ooh, it’ll be perfect now. I can’t wait for the next approval copy to come next Saturday.

Then I woke up this morning and picked up this same imperfect copy from my bedside table to have a little gloat despite its imperfections (as one does), and I opened it and saw that the font size on the title-verso page was way too big. Oh God! Why hadn’t I noticed before? What was I going to do? Here was I trying to get the thing to look perfect with not a whiff of self-publishing about it ( e.g. there is nothing that shrieks THIS NOVEL IS SELF-PUBLISHED louder than a gloss cover) and the font size on the publisher details page was three sizes too big. There followed an agony of indecision. Should I tell the printer and send him a new page? Should I wait until the final copy is printed in May?

And then I thought of a conversation I had with Zoe, who said it was absolutely fine for me to be ridiculously picky about the book production: it was nice for me to have something to pour all my pickiness into. And then I thought about the cultures where craftsmen deliberately include a mistake in their work, because only God can create things perfect. And then I thought of that motto that Dave gave me years ago - “Perfection is our aim. We must learn to tolerate excellence.” And then I thought – No, I don’t want to get the printer’s back up. This correction can wait.

But if the printer happens to be reading this and wouldn’t mind, perhaps he could email me. Or if you, dear reader, are married to the printer, or are his best friend, or you once saved his life in a freak yachting accident, perhaps you could ask him a favour for me.

I’m sorry, but I can’t NOT say it

This is largely a politics-free zone, but today I feel sick to my stomach about something and just have to ask:

Why are we bombing Libya when we let the Israelis pound Gaza for a whole month in January 2009, killing 1300 civilians, and injuring thousands of others and making thousands more homeless? Why do we turn a blind eye when Israel continually flouts international law and steals land and resources from Palestinians, to build settlements on Palestinian land ?

Here is a report I just found on the net -

Richard Falk, the special rapporteur of the United Nations on the Palestinians, told the U.N. Human Rights Council that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in eastern Jerusalem.

Falk called the council's attention to what he said was the intensifying deterioration of human rights in eastern Jerusalem, pointing to the increasing number of Jews moving into homes in the area and Palestinians being expelled from their homes by courts after challenges to their property ownership.

This situation "can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing," Falk said, according to Reuters.

No, I don’t want us to bomb Israel. I don’t want us to bomb anyone. I am a pacifist. But what will it take to make the world deal with Israel, to impose sanctions, to cut off all financial and moral support, to shame them for their treatment of Arabs as second class citizens?

And yes, I have strong views on the bombing of Libya, too. But as I said, this is largely a politics-free zone.

As Tom Waits says, ‘You can never hold back…’

I woke up at half past five this morning to the sound of the birds – the first time this year. Yesterday I lounged on my steamer chair in the sun. I feel as if I’ve been walking for months and months through a long grey tunnel, freezing cold at times, and I’ve suddenly stepped through a door into another dimension.

It gets better every year.

Don’t you think so, Tom?

Huge excitement!

My book arrived on Saturday. That is, the first approval copy of the pre-release books arrived on Saturday. What can I say? It was magic.

Yes, there are some problems: the printer forgot that I wanted a matt cover, and sent me gloss. And – mea culpa - since I last looked at the typescript, a gremlin appears to have been at work and omitted a couple of words, left in a sentence I didn’t want, shifted a line or two away from the margin. Isn’t it odd that you can go through something three zillion times, and mistakes will still elude your eye?

Oh well, it is an approval copy. And even with a shiny cover, the design is FAB. So I am not dismayed. Onward and upward. Maybe this time next week I will have the perfect version in my hot little hands.

Still waiting

I’m still getting over the virus I had, and can only manage half a day on normal activities before I get tired. That’s OK. I have a safe warm house, and nothing pressing that I must do. Yesterday I was lying on the sofa by the fire looking out at the bare branches of the mock orange against the cold sky, and missing my mother. I'd spoken to one sister on the phone in the morning, had an email from the other, and I’d emailed both my brothers. We keep in touch. I love them all. I’m very lucky. Sometimes, though, I feel as if we’re chatting amongst ourselves and keeping each other company while we wait for Ma to come back.

Ooh, people are bidding for me

Get over to Authors for Japan – I am on there now and people are bidding.

Authors for Japan

I feel awkward about carrying on with my blog as if nothing had happened. It doesn’t seem appropriate, in view of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear situation, especially when an already dire situation is becoming worse by the minute.

If things were normal, I’d be moaning on about how this is the second time I have had a 7 day flu-like bug this winter – and I’d be regaling you in purple prose about my symptoms. But when a mammoth disaster happens, it doesn’t seem right to complain about anything at all. That’s not altogether rational: there will always be someone somewhere in the world who is having an awful awful time, full scale disaster or no. Think of poor Bradley Manning, for example.

Today I want to tell you about:

1/ Save the Children, who need support to help the traumatised children of Japan.

2/ Authors for Japan, an appeal set up by writer Keris Stainton. On this site you can bid for signed copies of novels, to be a named character in someone’s next novel, to have a book dedicated to you, to have your pet mentioned in a novel, to have your writing – both fiction and non-fiction - critiqued, to have a book cover designed, a website designed and constructed, and many, many more things.

I am donating signed copies of my first two novels, and a signed PRE-RELEASE copy of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. So if you can’t wait until June to read it, get yourself over to Authors for Japan, and bid for it. It may be a couple of days before you see it on the site. I don’t know how fast Keris can deal with the offers she’s had.

 

Earthquakes destroy lives: Israelis do it with bulldozers

If you would like to donate money to help the people affected by the earthquake and tsunami, you can do so through the Red Cross. If you are a writer you can contribute books and critiquing services to an online auction organised by Keris Stainton here. Once it’s all set up, if you’re a would-be writer you can bid for critiquing services, and if you’re a reader you can bid for signed copies of books.
While the eyes of the world are understandably turned on the disaster in Japan, Israel has chosen this weekend to announce their approval of the building of hundreds of homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. This is illegal under international law.
Building new settlements sounds rather cosy, doesn’t it? What it MEANS is stealing the land from Palestinians, bulldozing their homes, destroying their livelihoods, chopping down their olive trees, and stealing their water supplies.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
And it bears saying it again: these Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

Two unconnected events

Yesterday was a day of high adrenalin, and if I hadn’t been laid low with a bug I might have exploded.

Two things happened. The first thing – which in the light of the second thing is trivial - was the arrival of the ISBN for my book. My book is now OFFICIAL. This is the number (yay!):

978-0-9568457-0-2.

I never thought a string of mere digits could make me feel so excited and so happy.

The second thing was the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Oh, those poor people. It is too awful to comprehend, too awful to comment on.

I don’t have anyone in Japan, but I was hopping up and down all day with agitation. I have a family who lives on the San Andreas fault, and I deal with it by denial – a useful psychological ploy in all kinds of intractable situations. But then when that family choose to go to Hawaii for their holidays, and a tsunami is making it’s way inexorably towards the island they are staying on, a mother does tend to worry – just a smidge, you understand.

Tweets, emails and phone calls were flying about all day. Thank God for modern technology. Thank God they are safe.

Writer? Grandmother? Writer?

I’ve been waiting excitedly for the hard copy of my book cover to arrive from San Francisco. I’ve seen it on screen, but I was dying to see it for real. Today it arrived. Fedex banged on the door and I rushed to answer. As I tore open the packet I saw there was something else in there - some A4-size photographs of Lux (aka @thebeean).  I forgot the book cover, pounced on the photos and oohed and aahed. “Isn’t she lovely? Look at this one! look at this one! Oh, look at this one!”

Then I looked at the book cover and drooled over that.

Perhaps I’m a grandmother before I’m a writer. Who would have thought it? Certainly not the me of 7 years ago.

The cover is beautiful and I am delighted. But just look at my granddaughter! Isn’t she gorgeous?

Character sketching through shopping lists, now with part 2

When I started writing novels I read a book called The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray. I found it useful as a guide to plotting, and also for tips on how to build characters, through various different exercises.
I came up with one of my own exercises, when I went shopping for a couple of people who were snowed in during the winter.

First list:

2 small tins vegetable soup
2 small jars of fish paste
1 packet sugar
1 tub of Flora lite
1 bottle of High Juice – apple
1 packet of catfood - salmon “temptations”

A list made up for someone I know:

conference pears
“Nice” soup
Cup a Soup in a jar (better value than in packets)
Stilton cheese
Wensleydale cheese
Loo rolls
Bacon – sliced thin
Small wholemeal loaf
Washing powder
Gin
4 packets of butter
Yorkshire teabags

So now, what do these people have in common?
And if you can’t guess, here is a clue – on a different occasion, they might both have had Horlicks and Muller fruit corners on their list – which is what I bought for another person who has things in common with both of these two people.
PART 2
I have been lying in bed (I am under par today) worrying about this post, because i didn’t explain myself well in it (probably because I am under par.)
What I meant to say was there are all kinds of ways of fleshing out your characters before you start to write a novel, and one of the ways could be by making a shopping list for them. And obviously, this doesn’t have to be just a grocery list. OK, I’m putting my head back on the pillow now.

Never mind books, I’m giving away pork scratchings

Do you recall how happy I was when  my village shop sourced me a dozen packets of pork scratchings?

For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter @suehepworth,  here are my tweets, with the rest of the story -

I cracked my tooth on some pork scratchings. Instant karma, said my veggie son.

Dentist: What broke your tooth? Me: A pork scratching. Dentist: and you want sympathy?

Packet of pork scratchings: 36 pence. Dentist's bill: £40. There's no such thing as a cheap snack.

So – I have five packets left. If you leave your name and address in my comments box I will post you one. First come first served, don’t get killed in the crush.