THE CALL – 4 X 4 THINGS ABOUT AGENTS

Posted on October 13, 2015 by jbwye

Claire Lyman has found an Agent! I’m so glad for her, and her story is sobering as well as enlightening. Thank you for sharing, Claire. Your tenacity and dedication are awesome – and the very best of luck for your onward journey.

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It’s been a little over two months since I got The Call, and I haven’t quite come down off my cloud. I’ve been writing for six years, churned out three novels and one slightly strange memoir/novel hybrid thingy, done an MFA in Creative Writing, been to more writing conferences than I can shake a stick at, read the magazines, read the books, done NaNoWriMo twice, been active on Authonomy back in its heyday, and finally, finally I have an agent for my novel, Unscripted.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned along the way.

Four ways to get an agent

A disclaimer: while I have heard of people getting agents in all four of these ways, only one of them has worked for me.

  1. Pitch, pitch, pitch. Go through your Writers and Artists’ Yearbook or your Writer’s Market or your Twitter list of agents, check the agents in question represent your genre, and follow their submission guidelines. Do a lot of these. For both of the novels I pitched, I told myself I would get to 100 agents before I re-assessed whether I would be better served by a small indie publisher or self-publishing. For the latest round, I decided I would do one a day so that the task wouldn’t seem overwhelming, and also so that when the inevitable rejections started trickling, I would always know there were lots more potentially catchable fish in the sea.
  1. Speed pitching events. At many writers’ conferences, there are opportunities to spend six or eight or ten minutes one-to-one with agents and editors, telling them about your novel. In the end, though, even if they say yes, you still basically have to pitch them by email, just with the added advantage of their having met you and possibly already requested a partial or a full.
  1. Follow the hashtag #mswl on Twitter. (I recommend typing in #mswl lang:en into search, to filter out any weird stuff that sometimes comes up under this hashtag.) MSWL stands for manuscript wish list, and agents will sometimes be very specific about what they are looking for (“a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in Mexico!” “A gender-flipped YA adaptation of Snow White!” “Historical fiction with a magical realism twist!”) When you then pitch them (by email, as normal, not on Twitter) put #mswl in the subject line: this will whet their appetites and possibly bump you higher up their email queue.
  1. Go to every writers’ event that you can. Conferences, summer schools, everything. Sometimes, if you’re going to a workshop, don’t take the manuscript that needs the most work, even though that may seem counterintuitive. Take something that is ready, or almost ready, to be pitched. It is possible that the person leading your workshop may know an agent and may recommend you to them. I don’t know if this works as a strategy or if I was just incredibly fortunate. It certainly wasn’t a calculated thing on my part – nobody had told me my manuscript was ready. And I still had to pitch the agent in the usual way – but I presumably got bumped to somewhere near the head of the queue, and the agent possibly read my work with an eye to liking it, not to rejecting it.

Four things I love about having an agent

  1. It helps me believe in myself.

Rightly or wrongly, I think of myself as a Legit Writer now. When people ask me what I do, I say that I’m a novelist. I hold my head a little higher and make eye contact as I do. I’m almost certain that the magical “rep’ed by…” line in my Twitter bio has made other authors on Twitter take me more seriously. After years of sitting in workshops having people say what is wrong with my writing, someone – someone who knows what she is talking about, someone who knows what sells – has fallen in love with my book, gets it, is championing it. It’s a bit of a rush, to be honest.

  1. My friends are so excited for me!

Most of them don’t really understand what an agent does – which is fair enough; I don’t have much of a clue as to most of their various industries entail either – but when I posted on Facebook that I had one, I got the most likes I’ve possibly ever had, including from people I was sure had long since unfollowed me. They ask me often now what’s next with my book and when they’re going to get to read it. (Patience, I want to say to them. Patience. It’s going to be, like, forever.) They are excited for me and that keeps me excited too, including through the whole editing process, which has been tougher on the emotions than I expected and is only just beginning.

  1. No more query letters

From now on, my agent will be the one to send out the letters, or emails, or make the phone calls. She is the one who will champion my book and tell others how great it is. And where I feel like I have to  be restrained, and where perhaps I see the flaws in my book or have insecurities about it, she can shout from the rooftops how great she thinks it is, in the way that you can when a novel is not yours but somebody else’s. (It probably also helps that she is American, rather than British and can therefore unironically use words like “awesome”.) I have the choice as to how much or how little I want to know about the process, whether I want to see the rejections. I can protect myself if I decide to. Yay.

  1. I’m not alone!

My agent has some very definite ideas about my book – certain plot points, character traits, word choices. Sometimes those are hard to hear, but sometimes they have been incredibly helpful, wise, and insightful. She has saved me from myself a number of times already: the Lower West Side of New York, for example, is apparently not a thing. Oops. And it’s great to have someone to bat ideas around with, to talk through changes I want to make. It’s not that I didn’t have anyone before – but now I have someone with an actual investment in my novel. Someone who is not just guessing what agents might like or editors might like but someone who actually knows. That doesn’t mean I have to do – or even want to do – everything she suggests, but it’s a great safety net, and so I feel more secure.

So, basically: getting an agent isn’t easy. It sometimes takes years. But it is worth waiting for. So worth waiting for.

Claire’s links: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ClaireLymanWrites

Twitter: http://twitter.com/clairelyman

Link’d In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/claire-lyman/15/372/65

Posted in Author Countdown, Authors | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Our Final Day in the Galapagos Islands

Posted on October 9, 2015 by jbwye

Saturday 30/12/04

The crew Another early breakfast, followed by farewell photographs and presents for the crew. Billie ushered us into the dinghy for the last time, and we headed for the Charles Darwin Centre in a vain attempt to beat the crowds. But it was not to be.

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Nevertheless, most of us managed to get some comparatively people-free pictures of the enormous tortoises which are protected and bred here. The plan is to re-distribute them to their natural habitats on the islands, where they are now conspicuous by their absence. The babies in one enclosure were covering the concrete like hundreds of giant bedbugs, and there is every hope that this effort to save the endangered species will be successful.

Very soon it became unbearably hot, and we paused for ice creams in the mediocre shade before reclaiming our luggage at the harbour and boarding a bus for the island crossing, followed by the ferry and the flight back to Guayaquil. Billie obtained the prized Galapagos stamp in our passports for those who asked, then disappeared after a brief farewell, to meet his next group.

They insist on using local guides in the Galapagos, which is understandable in order to support the local people. However, I cannot help feeling the authorities would be better advised to provide their guides with more intensive training, if their precious heritage is to retain its value in the eyes of the rest of the world. The Galapagos Islands are a wonderful experience for anybody going there for the first time, and their special aura at present overshadows any shortcomings. However, despite strict rules on where and when tourists are allowed to go, the environment could be in danger of being sacrificed to sheer numbers, and to laxity in enforcing the regulations. Although Billie did his very best, I would have been happier had we not had to share our wilderness within sight of dozens of other visitors.

But perhaps I’m too fussy, for there are few places in the world where one can really “get away from it all”.

Next stop, Guayaquil.

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A Different Sort of Police Procedural

Posted on October 5, 2015 by jbwye

Welcome to Emily Donoho, an intriguing new crime writer, with an enquiring mind and an inside knowledge of her craft. I look forward to sampling her work.

Emily Donoho

Your crime thriller book, published in May this year, takes the reader deep into the psyche of a New York homicide detective. Sounds intriguing. What prompted you to write it, and how long did it take you?

I wrote an early draft of it while I was an undergraduate, about ten years ago, that was about 30,000 words long. I was a psychology major, and I was interested in the criminal justice system, the therapeutic process, and also in writing something that jumped around temporally. This combines all three in a different sort of police procedural.   Then it languished for about a decade. After I finished my PhD, I was not busy being mostly unemployed, and I figured I would revisit the (then) little novella and attempt to make something serious out of it. I effectively rewrote the entire thing while retaining the basic premise, and it took me about three years.

Care to tell us about your journey to publication?

I submitted it to a couple of publishers in 2014, but did not hear back from them, de facto rejections. Then after a long spate of redrafting and rewriting, I got in touch with a professional editor, who really liked the manuscript. She was starting up her own small publishing company, Upatree Press, and wanted to take the novel on. I feel like I lucked out.

How much of your book draws from your own experiences?

I had an internship in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office in 2003 and gained some firsthand familiarity with the New York City criminal justice system. Otherwise, it draws from research, research, research. That said, I think any writer’s views and experiences get infused into their novels, even though they may be writing about people/situations that they don’t have direct experience of. That’s the art of it. I might not be a middle-aged male mentally ill, alcoholic New York City detective, but I can take aspects of things I have experienced or felt and then apply it to my characters, bringing them to life.

 This is your debut novel. Have you published any other writings, and are you thinking of writing more books?

I published an academic paper about Highland ‘folk’ cures for madness several years ago, and I’m working on a sequel to Canyons, a big, sweeping novel about homicide investigations in New York City in the early 90s, the height of the ‘crack wars’ and the murder rate in the city at its apex. I have also just started an MSc in investigative journalism, so I hope to have a lot of things, fiction and non-fiction, published in the future.

 Like to give us a glimpse of your favourite authors, and why.

To keep it brief, I’ll name two. Richard Price and David Simon stand out. Simon’s non-fiction books, Homicide and The Corner, about Baltimore homicide detectives and residents of the Baltimore ghetto respectively, were hugely influential. If you want to understand the culture of policing inner-city America, read those books. He wrote them in the late 80s and early 90s, but with all the noise in the media now and increased awareness of the difficult relationship between the African-American community and the police, they are more pertinent than ever.

Price is a great writer, and his novels set the gold standard for how I want to write about crime. Not whodunits with super-sleuthy detectives, but rather an attempt to show police work as accurately as possible with a kind of sociological and psychological awareness of culture and context of crime, cops, and the people they deal with in the street. He can encompass all of that, while telling a fantastic story.

You have an impressive academic record, and are a lady of many talents. Care to tell us something about your favourite hobby?

Hillwalking and mountaineering. I try to get out to the Scottish mountains as much as possible.

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What made you move from the United States to Glasgow?

I started my first master’s degree in Durham and then did my PhD in Glasgow. I love the city – reminds me of New York in some ways, but smaller and more manageable. So I have done my best to stay in or near it after finishing my doctorate in 2012.

I’ve been horse mad all my life, was it the same with you? I see, like me, that you have mentioned a horse early on in your book. I judge dressage, and you train. What are you working on at the moment?

My horse is 22 years old, but she is still sound and in work. I school dressage with her, but I have not shown since 2002, when I got fed up with the intensely competitive horse show culture on the East Coast of the US. Since I’ve been in Britain, I haven’t had the money nor the transport to get back into it, but I don’t mind. I just enjoy my horse, and I’m delighted she is still going strong at her age.

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 What has been the proudest moment of your life so far?

Getting Canyons published was up there, alongside finishing my PhD.

Links:

In the Canyons of Shadow and Light

Amazon:  In the Canyons of Shadow and Light.

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Emily-Donoho-977662978933470/timeline/

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Bird counting and acrobatic dolphins

Posted on October 2, 2015 by jbwye

Galapagos Diary No.

Friday 29/12/04. This time the boat sets off at 1am and we arrive at Floreana at 7am. It is an attractive, hilly island.  We plan an early disembarkation for a wet landing; only two other boats are in the bay.  We are first on the beach, but for some reason Billie keeps us waiting while he recounts a mysterious history of early German colonisers of the island. By the time he is finished, five more groups have arrived to filter inland.

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We have a short walk to a viewpoint overlooking the flamingo lagoon. The birds in ones and twos, bright orange against the waters, look similar to the African lesser flamingos, but much brighter in colour.  We don’t see them in flight.  A heron and some white-faced pintails complete the picture.  Near a lookout far away on the opposite side, with my new Swarovski binoculars bought specially for the Galapagos, I spy a couple of black-winged stilts and spotted sandpipers patrolling the shore.

We walk to the other side of the island, and are allowed 25 minutes to roam the sandy beach.  People everywhere.  Not many brave the sea, as we are warned against stinging jelly fish.  We return the same way.  I would like to go to the other lookout on the far side of the lagoon to examine the sandpipers more closely, but Billie takes us for one more snorkel dive, and he also promises us a treat: a dinghy ride round the rocks in Post Office Bay. There are hardly any sea lions on this island, and not a mockingbird in sight.

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We enjoy a final dinghy ride to a deserted little island off the beach.  It is a beautifully serene paradise of sand, mud and lava rocks, overhung with mangroves, and we are the only people there.  From a special vantage point, Billie points out the deserted ruins of the house the German colonists lived in on the main island, which is out of bounds.  I spot two semi-palmated plovers, bringing my Galapagos count to 41 birds.

Back to another wet landing on the main beach, and a visit to the “post office”, which is a makeshift affair compiled from driftwood and leftovers from civilisation, including graffiti.  Some of us have written postcards, which are duly “posted”, and the contents of the box is scrutinised for missives from other tourists to people in our home towns.  The idea is that we are the senders and the deliverers.  Billie says delivery times range from a few days to several years.  Again, we are given ample free time for a final stroll along the beach and a cooling dip in the sea while the guides and some boat crew congregate at a makeshift football ground for an energetic game.  Billie, by all accounts, is noted for his vocal rather than physical efforts.

We return to the boat for lunch and a smooth, five-hour trip back to Santa Cruz escorted by a school of playful dolphins, which entertain us with their athletic leaps and acrobatics in the sparkling waves.

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The Busiest Bandstand in Britain

Posted on October 1, 2015 by jbwye

It is cold. The biting wind whips round the arena. The prime seats are packed solid, and the Eastbourne Silver Band strikes up.

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We arrived on time to collect our tickets, but are too late and have to take exposed seats on the side. My heart lights up as the “Queen” is played. When was the last time I heard this live? I can’t remember. Not even the Eastbourne theatres do this. The vast majority of the audience stand. One man glances up at his wife as she gets to her feet, and an amused smile passes between them. He shows a brief moment of indecision then remains firmly in his seat. That’s okay, I think, he is exercising his right of expression as he sees it. He has an interesting face, which is riveted on the Band as they play through their repertoire of delightfully familiar music.

I huddle between my son and his wife from Australia. At the interval we sip hot chocolate and sacrifice our side front seats to take refuge under the shelter at the back, peering between the pillars. The music sounds mellower from here and we sink back in our seats, letting it surround us as we cease to shiver.

In no time the end approaches. The conductor – who first played in this Band in 1960, he tells us – announces Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture finale. My son goes back into the eye of the wind with his mobile phone, and I follow his example.

As the great music reaches its climax the fireworks pop, rising above the bandstand in a crescendo of sparkling colour. Colin is taking pictures non-stop and I copy him.

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It was a wonderful evening.

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Launch Party Shenanigans

Posted on September 29, 2015 by jbwye

Emma Rose MillarIf you’ve ever wondered what a virtual launch party is – look no further! Newcomer to our Crooked Cats’ cradle, historical novelist Emma Rose Millar has all the answers.

With the vogue for self-publishing now in full swing, it’s getting extremely difficult for any author to make their book stand out against the three million others or so being published each year on Amazon. So, how do you make the most of the four to eight week window just prior to and immediately after your launch? One answer might be to host an on-line launch party. When my publisher first suggested I should do this, I must admit, I was filled with panic. How can you create a virtual party, with virtual wine and virtual food and drink? Would people enjoy it? Would they even turn up? I wasn’t sure, but I was going to throw caution to the wind and give it my best shot anyway.

Facebook didn’t allow me to set up the event on my author page; I had to use my own Facebook profile then create it as a public event. I invited friends, friends of friends, people from every on-line reader and writer group I’m a member of. Then prior to the party, I put up blog posts on the event page; little snippets of what the book was about: famous pirates, piratical dress and behaviour codes. People started to become interested in the book and the on-line dialogue began.

I was lucky that the setting of my novel lent itself to a party atmosphere. Most of the action in Five Guns Blazing takes place off the coast of Jamaica; so much great music, tasty food and exotic drink comes out of the Caribbean that it was easy to sort out the virtual bar and buffet and to have a ska and reggae soundtrack playing in the background, courtesy of the lovely people at You Tube.

Bob Marley – One Love

emmarose pic1I’m so lucky I have so many wonderful friends and an amazing family who all mucked in and supported me, posting pictures of themselves dressed as pirates and other extracts from films, poems and television, and the man who edited the manuscript prior to it being taken up by Crooked Cat Publishing posted a lovely review on Amazon to coincide with the launch. They made their own parties at home, eating jerk chicken and curried goat and making delicious rum cocktails, (yes I know: it’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it!) And all of a sudden, I found I was really enjoying my virtual party, sitting in my pyjamas on my sofa drinking Pina colada. In fact I drank so much of it that I somehow managed to step in a bowl of cat food and fall over on my kitchen floor! Oh dear….

emmarose pic2It’s important you include the buying links and create an incentive to buy at your party. This could take the form of a competition or posting your favourite excerpts from the book. My publisher came up with a great idea which they included on the opening pages of my e-book: “Tweet a photo of yourself holding Five Guns Blazing to @crookedcatbooks,” they said, “and something nice will happen.” I still don’t know what it is, but I’m told it’s very nice!

I think in the end a good time was had by all. I’m yet to find out what effect it had on sales but I would definitely host one again, whether for a book launch or any other reason. It’s a virtual world we’re living in these days after all!

Five Guns Blazing is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

emmarose pic3“Never had she imagined she would be brought so low, and all for the love of a very bad man.”
1710:
Convict’s daughter, Laetitia Beedham, is set on an epic journey from the streets of London, through transportation to Barbados and plantation life, into the clutches of notorious pirates John ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, Mary Read and the treacherous Anne Bonny.
Who will win her loyalty and her heart?

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The Majestic Albatross

Posted on September 24, 2015 by jbwye

Galapagos Islands. No.5

After lunch we cruise to Punta Suarez point on Espanola in readiness for a three-hour afternoon stroll. This is the most varied walk of the week. With about 8-9 other groups we embark for our “dry landing”, only to find that the concrete steps are occupied by lazy sea lions, so we have to get out onto slippery lava boulders to avoid them. They ignore us utterly, unless we step too close, in which case an irritable  turn of the head, or a warning bark makes us move smartly away. However sleepy they seem, a wary eye is always on the look out.

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A customary pause on the beach while Billie waits to see where the other tours are heading. Then he leads us away to the left, to do the circuit backwards at our own pace. We stop in the only shade on the island while he tells another story, this time about the sally lightfoots, great orange crabs which cover the rocks in their millions.

We clamber through the boulders up to the flat ground towards the cliffs on the far side, getting nearer and nearer to the albatross nesting grounds. I have been looking forward to this ever since I booked the tour, for I have never seen an albatross. The verses of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner have rung in my ears ever since my school days.

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Suddenly we are there. Just an ordinary clearing of scrub, and a pair of 7 month-old juveniles are sitting together amid the boulders, with an adult couple resting a few yards further on. Under a bush we surprise a lone adult, and some excitedly track him as he flounders awkwardly towards the cliff edge.

“Don’t frighten him!” I cry, hanging back. After maddening pauses and hesitations, he spreads his enormous wings and takes off. High above us, more birds glide majestically on their wide thin wings. They are so elegant in the air. We follow a cliff path and come across a courting couple touching bills, the larger male strange with his pronounced eyebrows. They ignore us totally. I could stay watching for hours.

But time is passing. A colony of masked boobies, chicks on some nests, courting couples near others, make a striking picture against the lava rocks. There seems to be no set season for any of the birds on the island. We pause beside a horde of iguanas. They’re different on every island. The sally lightfoot crabs are everywhere, sometimes crimson or even black, depending on their stage of development.

Back to the bay, and the blue-footed boobies are again in action, sometimes diving together in perfect synchronisation, searing through a shoal of fish in the shallow waters, then turning to snatch a tasty morsel on the way back to the surface. And off again, flapping effortlessly up from the sea to start the process all over again.

EMsealionsWe join the queue at the landing stage, waiting for our transfer back to the Guatanamera. The sea lions are still in occupation, and everyone has to negotiate perilously slippery rocks before getting into the landing craft.

We have supper followed by the customary briefing for the next day before the whiteboard. The crew appear with complementary drinks, and try to whip up a party spirit among us with loud music and the promise of dancing. But all we want is to retire to our beds. It isn’t long before I put the light out. I’m getting quite agile now, climbing up and down from the top bunk like a teenager.

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Five Steps to Book Launch

Posted on September 22, 2015 by jbwye

Author Countdown Series

Some valueable advice from a brilliant writer – I have enjoyed Shani Struthers‘ books, and like all supportive authors, we have exchanged reviews. You can read hers on one of mine HERE. I’d never heard of ARCs, but most of all, I love your final few words, Shani, so important!

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You’ve written the book, it’s been re-written (at least a hundred times!), edited, proofread and a glorious cover created to show it off. What now? Do you just wait until launch day and hope it sells a zillion or do you have to think about… that dreaded word… promo. Yep, I’m afraid so. A book can peak at any time in its career on Amazon but around launch time should certainly be a highlight. So what can you do? Here’s five things at least…

  1. It’s not strictly necessary but do you have a website? It’s a good idea in order for readers to find out more about you and your books. If not, then at least get a blog up and running. Again, in an age of social media, readers like to know they can interact with their favourite authors over and above just reading the book. A Facebook and Twitter presence is also important, create a few teasers for your book, something to peak interest and post them up for all to see. Create teasers yourself (PicMonkey is popular and free to use as well) or rope in the more creative of your friends and/or family to help! Don’t bombard social media with them – remember it’s a networking site primarily – but a few well-placed teasers here and there can work wonders!
  1. Talking of networking, get to know other authors/readers, they can be invaluable on launch day, happily sharing posts and recommending your book to friends (but make sure you return the favour when it’s their turn!). There are also lots of great groups to belong to on Facebook, readers groups, writers groups, groups that focus on the paranormal, others that focus on romance, pick a few, get to know the people in them. Writing can be a solitary business but actually there are lots of writers out there, popping in to these sites in-between sentences and sharing thoughts, laughter and valuable advice. Listen to the more experienced and what they have to say re marketing.
  1. In order to create a buzz pre launch day, approach bloggers and ask them if they’d be prepared to run a feature on your book – this would typically include an author’s bio, an interview perhaps and most definitely an excerpt from the book itself. A picture of the author is also usually requested so make sure you’ve got a good one to hand!
  1. ARCs – those capitals used to mystify me, conjuring up biblical images until I realised they stood for Advanced Reader Copies! If you can, send out ARCs (just trips off the tongue now!) to review sites/interested readers who are prepared to read and leave an honest review on Amazon come launch day. Admittedly, in the case of review sites, some genres are easier to place than others but a review from them is really worth it. Just bear in mind there may be a long wait list, so this is something that needs to be thought about very early on.
  1. A launch party – you can have a real one, in fact I often do, any excuse for a glass of champers, but think about hosting a Facebook launch party too. These are popular events and again, can help to increase the online visibility of your book and create a buzz. They’re really simple to set up too and all your FB friends are automatically invited. Set a time (taking into account US time zones too, so later in the day is usually best), share teasers, reviews, blog pieces and, very importantly, organise music, games, and competitions, some with prizes attached. Vistaprint is one company you could use in order to have mugs with your book’s picture printed on them, pens too, notebooks, magnets, etc, etc. People love giveaways, encouraging more and more to attend, plus it’s great advertising for you – a double whammy.

There are plenty more things you can do pre-launch, contact your local paper for example as well as independent bookshops in your area to see if you can arrange a signing, but above all, remember to have fun. That’s what this is all about in the end. Oh and breathe, remember to do that too! Good luck!

Haunting of Highdown Hall Cover MEDIUM WEB

UK http://tinyurl.com/lak4ub2;

US http://tinyurl.com/l29wj78

front2 (834x1280)UK http://tinyurl.com/n9q352z;

US http://tinyurl.com/nzjz62x

 

front (854x1280)UK http://tinyurl.com/ml3om46;

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Facebook Author Page: http://tinyurl.com/p9yggq9

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shani_struthers

Blog: http://shanisite.wordpress.com

Goodreads http://tinyurl.com/mq25mav

TSU https://www.tsu.co/shanistruthers

 

Author Bio

Born and bred in the sunny seaside town of Brighton, one of the first literary conundrums Shani had to deal with was her own name – Shani can be pronounced in a variety of ways but in this instance it’s Shay-nee not Shar-ney or Shan-ni – although she does indeed know a Shanni – just to confuse matters further! Hobbies include reading and writing – so no surprises there. After graduating from Sussex University with a degree in English and American Literature, Shani became a freelance copywriter. Twenty years later, the day job includes crafting novels too. Writing both contemporary fiction and paranormal mystery, she is the author of The Runaway Year and The Runaway Ex, both published by Omnific Publishing. Her paranormal work is published by Crooked Cat Publishing and includes Jessamine and the bestselling Psychic Surveys Book One: The Haunting of Highdown Hall and Psychic Surveys Book Two: Rise to Me. All are available on Amazon.

The Return – published June 2015 – is the third in the Runaway series but can also be read as a standalone.

Coming soon: Eve: A Christmas Ghost Story.

 

 

   

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Blue Feet Like Aircraft Landing Gear

Posted on September 18, 2015 by jbwye

Galapagos Islands. No. 4

We return to the boat for a three hour trip to Santa Fe, with lunch on the way, and pull into a tiny lagoon. The sandy bottom and green water reflect the breasts of young frigate birds. Colourful fish come to the galley for leftovers. A turtle breaks the surface and examines us before popping back into the deep again. A puffer fish gets caught in the ship’s pipe, so the electricity has to be cut off to remove it.

The scene reminds me of Turtle Bay in Kenya, but here it is less peaceful. Half a dozen boats are anchored, disgorging people to snorkel with sea lions and white-tipped sharks.  Dinghies leave their boats one after another, crammed with snorkelled tourists who do the rounds of the rocks: first swimming with sea lions along the craggy shore, then round the sandy beach curve. I swim in a circle round the Guantanamera, the water is smooth and refreshing, then I lounge on deck. A flock of blue-footed boobies fly in, showing their bright blue feet like aircraft landing gear.

EMbluefooted boobiyWe have a wet landing in the afternoon, followed by a leisurely two-hour walk against the flow of tourists. I spot a couple of warbler finches, some land iguanas and we pass a 100-year-old cacti with very thick trunks, looking like polished bark. We stop several times to let other groups go by. On the beach again, I try to distinguish between the small and medium finches, which is very difficult unless seen side by side. Sea lions lurk under the bushes, and colourful Galapagos doves peck in the dirt.

After supper we notice pictures of floods on the TV, which is all in Spanish, and the crew talk of an earthquake; I wonder how an earthquake can be linked with floods, but don’t take much notice. We retire early as the boat swings into gear for Espanola. This time, it isn’t as rough as I feared.

Tuesday 28/12/04

We awake in an idyllic bay – emerald green waters, a rock, and a long sandy beach – and disembark for three hours of individual wandering between the STOP signs on the fine sand. There are a few sea lions. Curious Hood mockingbirds are intrusive in their behaviour. (Hood was the previous name for this island). Desperate for liquid, they edge up  close when I open my water bottle and make it clear they want to share. One jumps onto my hand. But we are not allowed to oblige, Billie warns us, because this will make the birds unnecessarily dependent on people. They have to search for their own water on the cactus plants, as they have always done.

A flock of Galapagos doves flies in and a solitary Galapagos hawk waits on a rock. The iguanas here are different again. Fearless ground finches: one hops onto my back as I bend down to examine it closely. I also get very close to a yellow warbler while wandering happily for two hours, then I take to the ocean with snorkel attached. I dont like getting my head and ears wet, and dont go far. A few medium-sized fish swim around sparse outcrops of coral, and I see more turtles poking their heads up from the sea.

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The Lonely Art of the Lonely Heart

Posted on September 12, 2015 by jbwye
Welcome Carol Hedges once again – this time for little bit of light flirtation.
Carol's Birthday 2014 001
So I’m idling through the Guardian’s ‘Soulmates’ column, as you do because it has good adjectives, and I am struck by the number of ladies and gentlemen who are looking for lurve – or possibly romance, friendship, affection, a good time, adventure, passion or felicity (yup, copied that last from someone’s ad.)
 
VICTORIANFLIRTING10423816_10205678949118797_1792152465404614043_nWhich makes me think that nothing really changes, does it? As part of my research for novel number 4, I have just finished reading a brilliant book called Shapely Ankle Preferr’d  by Francesca Beauman. It is the history of the Lonely Hearts Ad from 1695 -2010. Yes, that is not a typo!
 
Admittedly I know I am lucky, in that Beloved Husband and I have been married for 40 years come this September, and although those of you who know us well would say that in our case it is definitely Mr Chalk wed Ms Cheese, we go along amicably and are looking forward to growing even older together. We still make each other laugh. A lot. In his case, every time I open my mouth and say something about football.
 
Others do not have such good fortune. ‘Good fortune’ being the critical attribute. To snare Mr Right in the 17th century, it was not so much GSOH as ”Comeliness, Prudence, and 5 or 600l. in Money, Land or Joynture” that would guarantee you an admirer quicker than you could say knife. Or wife.
 
By the 1700’s, there were fifty-three newspapers all containing lonely heart ads of one sort or another. I was fairly gobsmacked at the audacity of one advertiser who wrote: ”A young man wants a wife with two or three hundred pounds; or the money will do without the wife – whoever will advance it shall have 5%” (Daily Advertiser 1759) Not for nothing did Jane Austen pen those famous words at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice that: ‘…a young man in possession of a good fortune … must be in want of a wife.’
 
In a way, I guess we are more fortunate (sic) in that money does not feature quite so prominently in today’s search for love, though I’m sure it lurks behind the scene, gurning happily. Even so, it is sad that in our digital, well connected age, when we are all supposed to be only 6 steps away from each other (or possibly 6 feet away from the nearest rat, can’t remember, but maybe not inapposite, given the topic) that there are still so many lonely folk around. 
 
And oh my! So many over 60’s! Maybe I’ll hang on to Beloved Husband for a bit longer. I can’t see anyone else in their right minds going for: Totally batty writer (62), likes cake, cats, 2CV’s and prosecco. Knows absolutely zip about football ...  can you?
 
 
Contacts:
 
Twitter: @carolJhedges
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