…and the Next…

Having posted that I’d printed off Mystery in Morocco and got such a lot of encouraging replies, I kept looking at the pile of paper. It became covered with a variety of things and was beginning to disappear. Then yesterday, I uncovered the manuscript, spirited it away and curled up on my bed and started reading!

I’m now a number of chapters in, wincing at some of the inelegant turns of phrase used, but excited by the new ideas for filling the gap when I pull out the rogue whodunit that is still lurking at the beginning.

It’s good to be back with my story; even better to be back with my characters who I love – all of them, even the flaky Johnny 😀

Thanks all of you for your encouragement. Without it I don’t think I would have made that final effort to start.

Prue xxx

 

The Next Step …

Time to blow the dust off this blog and get going again 🙂

Last week I spent some time printing off a copy of my would-be-novel Mystery in Morocco. It’s sat next to me on my desk and has been there, untouched, since I printed it off.

Next stage is to make time to read it before starting the second revision. There are still some major changes needed to remove those stories which will insist on hanging on in there when they are just not wanted 😀

I still feel nervous about starting with it again but it isn’t going to get finished if I do nothing. There’s a nasty little voice in my head saying, “It’s jinxed. Keep away!”

Somehow I think Holly would have no truck with that little voice and would jump on it fast. I need to get me some of whatever Holly has 🙂

Hope you’re all getting on ok, and that whatever you are working on is coming along nicely. I think of you all often.

Prue x

 

Happy New Year!

Starting a new year without Mr Prue was unbelievably painful. But today the sun shone and I went out walking with the local ramblers group, then had a long telephone conversation this afternoon with a friend who lives a long way away, which was lovely.

Yesterday (the last day of 2012) I printed out the last version of The Green Ribbon, the short story I wrote in 2011. A few people were kind enough to read it and make valuable comments – and that’s where things stopped when Mr Prue became ill again early this year.

So the story is sat here waiting for me to read through those comments and to incorporate them before starting work on a second revision. That’s my goal for this week. Wish me luck!

I wish you all a happy, healthy, successful and fun-filled New Year, and I hope it brings to those of you who write many words on wings of inspiration.

Love from Prue x

 

A Merry Christmas to You All

To all my online friends around the world, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Wherever you are, however you spend the day, I hope it is filled with happiness, peace and love.

I may not post here very often at present – there is still a lot to do – but you are often in my thoughts.

With love and hugs from Prue xxx

 

More Reading

I’m still writing letters to all and sundry, and I’ve been editing someone’s archaeology report which has been absorbing.

From time to time Mystery in Morocco has been in my thoughts again and in the not too distant future winter will set in and there will be little to do in the garden so… maybe I’ll get it out and start work at that point. And then there’s Christmas which will be different this year and burying myself in my book might be just what I need…

Until then, I’ve got back into the habit of reading daily which makes me feel a bit more ‘normal’ 🙂 I’m afraid Eric Newby’s book is still on the coffee table. I discovered an Agatha Christie which I hadn’t read before: The Moving Finger and her books are so easy to read and suck you into the plot that I enjoyed it tremendously.

About the time I was coming to the end of it, my new credit card arrived so I ordered a number of books from Amazon including a couple of Agatha Christies. However, before I had chance to start them, my sister gave me two Ellis Peters books. I assumed they would be the Brother Cadfael stories but no!

They are about an Inspector Felse and set in modern times. What startled me – and in a strange way kept me reading against my will – was my distinct lack of ability to believe in the story and characters!

I’m a great fan of Brother Cadfael books. I think they are well researched, the characters are all different, I care about the characters and think Brother Cadfael a wise old bird. His ability with herbs and his cool, logical thinking, his origins (I won’t give away what they are) and how he is in the monastery spirit me away to that long-ago world.

How can anyone who can write so well and so authentically so that I become so absorbed write so poorly with a different set of characters and plot?

I feel stunned. And it’s got my little grey cells in my brain all of a quivver because there is something valuable to be learned from that. Hence why I’m still reading a book which normally I would have put in the charity shop box.

Now, I know everyone is different and what I’ve just written is my own opinion and may not be one you share. Please feel free to differ! Or share similar discrepancies which you’ve noticed with a favorite author.

More about Agatha Christie later — and the books on Ancient Egyptian Art for the course starting next Saturday and which I’m looking forward to.

It’s good to have things to look forward to. Hope you have something nice on the horizon 🙂

 

The Reading Continues

The last week has found me dissolving in tears more often than I like to admit but that goes with the territory, as the saying goes. Bad enough when I’m home but it happened in the building society last week.

I’d gone in to sort out a number of problems and the woman behind the counter got a little short with me. It doesn’t take much to set me off and there I was, in tears, with a long queue of people behind me. But the woman burst into action, ushered me through a door into an office, got me a cuppa and sorted everything out. Her manner changed and she was so very kind to me.

Before I headed home, I went into the bookshop and treated myself to and Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger, Trudi Canavan’s The Ambassador’s Mission (Book 1 of the Traitor Spy Trilogy), and Eric Newby’s On the Shores of the Mediterranean. The latter is autobiographical, written in the 80’s. Newby was something of an explorer and his Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is amazing, as is The Last Grain Race.

So, I’ve started with Eric Newby’s book. He was in Italy during the second world war and was captured by the Germans but escaped to the Apennines. A Slovenian woman there hid him and later they married and she accompanied him on some of his travels.

In the book so far, they have turned up at their house in north Tuscany, in Italy, and head off for Naples where they start their travels round the Mediterranean in a clockwise direction (his wife’s practical suggestion when Newby couldn’t decide where to start).

It’s one of his later books, and so far not as dramatic as the two I mentioned above. Early days yet because I’m only on page 23!

Still no writing other than business letters but thanks to Kirsten over on A Scenic Route I went looking for the word ‘Look’ in chapter 1 of A Mystery in Morocco.

For those of you who may not have seen this before, here is the paragraph:

Juliana Davenport’s dark eyes were brimming with laughter, mischief and adoration in equal measure as she looked up at her partner. Her youthful face was becomingly tinged with pink from the exertion of waltzing round the ballroom, and from the realisation that Lord Eversleigh’s right hand, placed lightly but firmly in the small of her back, was holding her closer than was likely to be thought proper by some of the older guests.

It made me remember how much I love this story, how it has such a promising beginning, and how this changes as the story goes from London to France to Morocco. I love my characters and have apologised to them profusely for what I did to them, but they rose to the occasion each time (with one exception!) and did things I’d never dreamed of 🙂

 

Reading Again

I’ve been listening to the radio a lot recently and was listening to a serial of E.M. Forster’s Room With a View. It got to the bit about skinny dipping and I had the urge to read the book again.

It’s been a gentle joy to read it again, just the right sort of thing to get me back into reading.

No creative writing yet. I’m still bogged down with all sorts of business letters which are driving me mad. Not all companies seem to know what they are doing; some get things wrong like the company who changed a joint membership into an individual membership. I may not have noticed except they got my name wrong. While I was talking on the phone, I realised that joint to individual should mean a refund of some kind. The person on the end of the phone didn’t know and made it obvious she didn’t care. It took three requests by me to get her to transfer me. I ended up sounding like my first headmistress at high school! Eeek! But it worked. And yes, I am entitled to a refund. Other companies send out standard letters even though they have been informed of Dez’s passing which strikes me as callous and inhuman. They also come in for the headmistress treatment.

The postman has been bringing more letters each day than I can deal with in a day but today, there was only one bill and a few adverts. Fingers crossed that continues and I may get to the end of this surreal paperchase before long.

Hope you are all continuing to write and making progress with your WiPs. Thinking of you all

Prue xxx

 

A Good Send-Off

The service of thanksgiving for the celebration of the life of Mr Prue went well. So many people came from all over the country, some of whom I hadn’t seen for well over 10 years. It was good to see them all catching up with each other at the afternoon tea after the service, exchanging contact details.

The service itself was wonderful. It was just right, with music Dez loved, two tributes by the ex-head of the research institute where Dez and I worked for so long, and also the chairman of the geology group we both belonged to.

Here’s the order of service. It seems odd putting it on a writing blog but I want to share.

Requiem by Tomas Luis de Victoria sung by the Armonico Consort

Entrance music: Hanaq Pachap Kusikuynin sung by Ex Cathedra

Welcome and Opening Prayer

Poem: Not how did he die, but how did he live? Anon

Tribute (about Dez’s scientific career)

Reading: Proverbs ch 4, vs 5 – 13 (we heard this on a visit to Ely cathedral a few years ago. We’d been on a tour of the cathedral, the last of the day. As it finished the evening service was starting and Dez suggested we stayed for it. Rather odd as he didn’t believe in God and so never went to church. The reading was Proverbs ch 3 and 4. It impressed me so much that I asked one of the clergymen after what it was, and he wrote it down. I’d looked it up in the bible when I got home and left the piece of paper in the page, then forgot all about it. When a friend phoned the other day to suggest a reading, the bible opened at Proverbs. I remembered and thought, “Yes! That’s just right”.

Hymn: For the beauty of the earth

Tribute: (about Dez’s invovlement with the geology group)

Address

Music: Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan (Dez loved Bob Dylan’s music. I didn’t share this love – one of the very few because mostly we liked the same music. It seemed right to have Dylan in somewhere, although I had to grit my teeth through it!).

Reading: Song of Songs ch 8, vs 6 – 7 (NIV)

Prayers

Hymn: He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster

Commendation, Committal and Blessing

Poem: If I should go before the rest of youby Joyce Grenfell

Exit: Trumpet Tune and Ayre by Henry Purcell

A friend did the flowers; ivory roses with frothy gypsophilla, stripey grass leaves and larger dark green leaves. It was a glorious tribute. And I cut some wild carrot flowers because Dez worked on fungal diseases of carrots.

It was a sunny day, people stood around afterwards chatting in the sunlight. It was more like a party which was lovely. Afternoon tea lasted nearly 3 hours! This was held at the conference centre where Dez worked. They put display boards on tables and I’d put up lots of photos of Dez. There must have been well over a hundred people there and I think I managed to speak to every one of them.

It was a fitting end to a life well-lived and enjoyed, and it was wonderful to see people talking and laughing. The afternoon was as good as it could be, and as more than one person said, “Dez would really have enjoyed it,” which made me smile because I think he would have.

 

 

Sad news

I’m so very sorry to say that Mr Prue died last night. He was in hospital and collapsed. There was nothing they could do for him. I still don’t know what happened but may find out more later this week.

Mr Prue’s name was Dez and he was a wonderful man. He was the most precious thing in my life. I loved him dearly, and our love kept us going through the years. I cannot get my head round what happened, and I cannot contemplate life without him.

Thank you all for you concern, good wishes and kind thoughts.

I will come back here when all the things which need to be done have been done, and when I stop panicking at the thought of life alone. My book, as with many other things right now, seems pointless. I know it isn’t, and Mr Prue wouldn’t want me to think that. But it must be put aside for another day.

Love to you all x

 

 

Update

Writing is something which doesn’t feature much in my life right now. In spite of my determination to do 1 SFR a day, that hasn’t happened.

Mr Prue has been transferred to a bigger hospital 20 miles away and will have some more tests done tomorrow. Just waiting to find out more is unhinging me – I wish I could switch off my fertile imagination! Can only assume I’ve read far too many melodramatic books 🙂

One benefit of waking early is to get out into the countryside for a walk by 6.30am. The days when the sun shines are glorious. No sounds except for the birds singing (mostly larks at that time of day), the wind in the trees and an occasional bleat of a sheep.

Hope all is well with you all, and that you’re pursuing your projects and enjoying them 🙂