Multiplying, Colour-Burn and Gaussian Blur

I started with this, drawn on a sheet of scrap paper, copied from a photo of a stuffed fox. I scanned it into the computer. Before I adjusted the contrasts, you could see the type showing through from the other side.

Then I opened the ink sketch in Photoshop, took out the white background of the scrap paper and added a dark background layer. Coloured the drawing, added a title and a screamer.

This is only a try-out for the front cover. I can't do the complete one until I've finished laying out the interior and know how thick the spine will be.
     I used various photos for reference, sometimes using the 'eye-dropper' tool to get an idea of what the colouring should be.
     I was so pleased with the result that I hailed a passing brother. "Cop a butcher's at this," I said.

     He came, he looked. A long silence. Then, grudgingly, "That's pretty good. Come out of it."
     He took over my chair. He over-layered in violet and red. He lowered opacity, multiplied and colour-burned. Recklessly, he employed the polygonal lasso and the Gaussian blur... 
     My good friend Karen Bush tells me that she likes it, but the nose of the fox is a bit wonky. It is, I know, but I don't care. The original stuffed fox in the photo may have had its nose put out of joint -- and in any case the 'bone dog' of the story is a sort of Frankenstein fox, created by witch-craft from an old fox-fur clumsily stitched together.

Here's the completed cover.

Amazon 'suppressed' it for a while because they weren't convinced I own the publishing rights. They seem to do this with every book published with Createspace now, which I suppose is a good thing. Frustrating, though. My friend, the above mentioned Karen Bush, a retired member of this blog, was all set to publish her book about how to deal with your dog's fear of fireworks and had arranged an article in Your Dog magazine to help publicise it.  But because Amazon suppressed her book she now doubts whether she'll be able to get a proof copy and make any alterations before the article appears.

You can find out about Karen's books on dog-training here.

       The Bone Dog is part of a project of mine -- to republish all my out of print books for the age-group 8--10. Since The Wolf's Footprint is my best-seller among my indie-books, it seems to make sense to publish more for that market.

The Wolf's Footprint

Odin's Monster 

Bone Dog is available now, both as paperback

 and kindle

Hot Beer

There was, at last, a pause in the English monsoon. The sun came out and so we went to Beer. The English are notorious for their warm beer. This Beer was stonking hot. Feel the heat rising off those cobbles.

       Near where the concrete path ends and these cobbles begin, a man was talking to two friends. "She said, 'Now you know what child-birth feels like.' I said, 'I don't want to!' But she held my hand, very kind..."

I've never known the sea to be so mirror-still that the cliffs cast such a reflection.

          A woman said to a girl of about eleven, "What will your Mum and Dad say when they find out what you've been doing with us?"  The girl said, in delighted triumph, "Nothing! I've done nothing!"

Beer competes hard for the village in bloom title. Several doorsteps held enormous scarlet geraniums the size of small bushes. There were window-boxes and hanging baskets and stone pots of marigolds and nasturtiums were part of the street furniture.

The lane leading down to the sea got in on the act too, with valerian, wild carrot, flax, bird's foot trefoil...

People swam, lay on the hot pebbles and watched the little white sail-boats glide past.

          "Is it cold?"   -     "Brass monkeys are diving and weeping, mate."   

We went to Sidmouth for the evening. This sandstone cliff beside the river always catches the evening sun.

Next day, Beer was just as hot, but there was a strong breeze. All the flags were horizontal.

Instead of reflecting the cliff, the sea slapped against it and streaks of orange sand could be seen in the water.

But you could turn your back on it and watch the swallows over the cliff.
       As you can see, it's not a crowded place.

           "Shall we get fish'n'chips and eat them on the beach?"
                                        "Better be ready to fight off the sea gulls."
                                                   "Yeah, well, there's no shortage of stones."

But you always have to go home. So we climbed up the cliff path, back to the car and the motorway - and the heat without a sea breeze.

Hope you enjoyed the British summer! Let's hope it lasts a couple of days more.

The Unexpected Animal - A Shaman Journey

 Years ago, I wrote The Ghost Drum, about a shaman who steps into other worlds and explores them as easily as we breathe.

Lucy Coats

     At the end of last year, I went on a shaman journey. Not a very long one. Barely across Shaman Street.
     Like the first, it was under the guidance of Lucy Coats, fellow member of the Scattered Authors Society and well known writer and witch about town.
      A few years ago now, at the SAS's annual conference at Charney Manor, Lucy led a 'shaman journey' workshop. Like Lucy, who has written several retellings of myth, I love these ancient stories and their imagery and have a great interest in all things pagan and witchy. So I went along out of curiosity.
       Lucy had us all lie down on the floor, close our eyes and get comfortable. Then, with her drumming and her gentle voice, she hypnotised us into a state of deep relaxation. She was going to take us on a guided journey, she said. What did we see, behind our closed eyes?

          There's a proverb that I used as a touchstone while I wrote The Ghost Drum -

'When we sleep, the dreamer inside us wakes.'

          I used it to help myself imagine how someone could walk in another world - to remind myself how vivid, solid and in every way real dreams can be.
         When Lucy asked us what we could see, the dreamer inside me woke, and looked up at an enormous tree towering high above, its grey branches spiralling upwards against a starred sky. I was taken aback by the strength and vividness of the image, so much so that, of course, I had to belittle it.
         'Oh, of course, it's the World Tree,' I thought - something I'd been imagining since I first came across the Norse Myths at eleven. I knew that the World Tree was about as ancient a symbol as you could find, and that Siberian shamans had 'climbed the World Tree' to travel between worlds.
         My mind is very well stocked with mythic images - so there was nothing very surprising in it producing one on request.
        But it was so very clear and real an image. It had solidity and weight. I've seen - and touched - images as real in dreams, but my waking imagination can't attain that degree of detail. So maybe, I thought, something out of the ordinary was going on here.

Ygdrasil - Wikipedia, public domain

          Maybe that's how it works, I thought. If you're taking a trip into your own inner world and dreams, you can only use the imagery in your own head. My own image of the World Tree had been with me a long time.
          So I decided to stop bitching and let things happen. Lucy led us, with her words and drumming, along a path and to a door... Behind the door were three caves, and we were to find, if I remember correctly, a spring in one, a fire in another, and some kind of prize or gift in the third.
          It was a long time ago, and I don't remember all of the experience - what did stay with me was the extraordinary reality of everything I 'saw.' There was a large bowl carved out of crystal, a burning fire lighting the darkness of a cave. Perhaps none of the imagery was very original - but then, the archetypal, by definition, is not going to be original. It was all very real. I felt the heat from that fire. If I'd put my hand into it, it would have burned.
          There was also the great feeling of peace and relaxation the experience left me with when Lucy called us back. I remember thinking it a very interesting experience indeed and that if ever the chance came along to take another trip, I would jump at it.

The chance came at another SAS event - the 'Winter Warmer' held at Folly Farm in Somerset. Lucy was there, and offered another chance to take a 'shaman journey.'
     The event took place at the end of November 2015, over a weekend where one storm roared into another. Or maybe it was one long storm that lasted three days. It was dark, wet and cold. Lucy suggested that we bring our duvets with us to the studio, which might be a bit draughty.
       I'd had a sleepless night - as had many others, as the storm roared and stomped about the sky - and had just returned from a walk with my friend Jenny Alexander, where we'd tramped over a hill in strong winds. So I was more than willing, at Lucy's suggestion, to lie down and stretch out, snuggle into my duvet, close my eyes and - Zzzzz-Zzzzz
        Unfortunately, I do snore and I did keep falling asleep. For me, Lucy's voice faded in and out...

        This time, Lucy played a tape of gentle music rather than drumming but, as before, she first lulled us into a deeply relaxed state. It was very cosy, lying on the floor among my fellow Scattereds, warmly snuggled in a duvet and drifting off gently into a half-sleep.
         When she had us all relaxed, Lucy suggested that we were lying cradled in the roots of a big tree, in a forest. I was there! I felt the roots around me, smelled the leaf-mould and earth, looked up and saw the branches and leaves above, scattering the light.
          As others said, the sound of the storm outside helped our imaginations - we didn't have to call up the sound of wind soughing in branches. It was soughing like billy-o. My imagination, somehow boosted or freed by the hypnotism, worked at full strength, using all my memories of trees and woods, weaving them together into a - well, a virtual reality. An alternative reality. I could smell the forest. I could hear it. I could feel those cradling roots.
          I've experienced this other-worldly reality in dreams but here, I wasn't exactly asleep. I wasn't exactly awake either. I kept drifting off - but then I'd hear a snatch of what Lucy said, or a whisper or movement from one of the others around me.
          An animal is going to come to you, Lucy said. It doesn't matter what kind.
          Oh, it'll be a cat, thought my doubting mind. I like cats, I had a cat narrate the Ghost World books, it'll be a cat for sure.
          So I 'looked around' as it were, into the wood, fully expecting to see a cat. Trying to see a cat. Probably my ex-cat, Biffo.
          Coming through the trees, I saw a huge white stag. Plain as anything, there was this huge white stag with an enormous spread of antlers -
          No, no, I thought. Hang on. Return to sender. This is wrong. Should be a cat. Stands to sense it should be a cat.
          The stag came on regardless. It was white, it had a big mane or ruff of fur around its

shoulders, and from the great tree of its antlers hung golden chains, bells, apples, and a golden key. These golden ornaments swung as the stag came, catching the dim woodland light and shining.
          (Since I've been trying to learn to use graphics programmes, I tried to make something like what I saw, but the stag in my image is Bewick's engraved stag and much daintier than the white stag I saw in my dream or whatever it was. The stag I saw was a much beefier, shaggier specimen with heftier antlers.)
          If, awake, I'd tried to imagine how a stag would walk, I doubt I could do a very good job, but here I saw each movement of the head and hooves.My subconscious was drawing, I suppose, on a lifetime of BBC Wildlife documentaries.
          Follow your animal, Lucy said. It will take you to your special place, your safe place.
          I can't remember exactly what Lucy said about this place, because I kept drifting off to sleep, but I think it was the place where you can go for inspiration, if you need an idea or a solution to a problem. The place where your imagination lives and springs from.
          So, I got up and went with the stag. He greeted me by blowing on my hand, and I felt his warm breath. I felt his fur (which I suspect felt more like a cat's fur than a deer's, since I don't think I've ever touched a deer's fur in my life.) I walked at his shaggy shoulder and he led me uphill through the trees that arched overheard and rutted the track with their roots.
          Your animal will bring you to a door, Lucy said, and the stag led me to a small wooden door. of thick planks, set in the hillside.
          Your animal will give you the key.
          And there was a big golden key hanging from a chain on the stag's antlers. He lowered his head so I could take it.
          I turned the key and ducked through the low door into a dim, round, warm little place. There were wooden beams, an open fire, and benches covered with hides and fur. I think it probably owed a great deal to a yurt I once ate venison and blueberries in, in Arctic Finland, and maybe a little to Scara Brae, the Stone Age village in the Orkneys. It was a very nice little gaffe to find inside your own head, and certainly felt safe and warm, but my memories of this 'shaman journey' weren't of 'the safe place' but of meeting that amazing and unexpected stag.
          Why a stag? And why one bedecked in gold chains? - If, waking, I'd been asked to predict what animal would appear in this half-dream, I'd have said, a cat. Maybe a dog. If pushed to be a bit more dramatic, I might have said, 'A wolf,' since I've several times written about wolves. But never a stag with gold hanging from its antlers
          It's this quality of the unexpected, as well as the vivid detail, that makes these experiences, for me, so strange and so interesting. I remember the feeling of surprise, even shock, when I 'saw' the stag. I expected to be in control, to be able to 'order up' the expected cat. But I had no control. I wasn't expecting the stag, but there he was, gold and all, and there was no getting rid of him.

         At the end, we sat up and recounted what we'd seen. I was glad that my inevitable snoring had turned into 'a giant in a cave' for another traveller. Everyone had 'seen' an animal and had been led to a secret, special place - but it's for them to give their account of their journeys, if they choose, not for me.

          I've tried repeating this experience, but it's not easy without Lucy's soothing voice.

          Thank  you, Scattered Authors Society, and especial thanks to Lucy Coats, for making this trip into my own head possible.

          Lucy Coats' website is here.

          And here is Lucy on 'creative napping.'

A Spiritual Revelation: Single Malt Whisky

Comedian Rich Hall

I once saw the comedian Rich Hall addressing an audience. He asked if there were any Scottish people in. Answering roars told him that some people came from Edinburgh
          "Ah, Edinburgh," he said. "I once had a spiritual revelation in Edinburgh. It was called, 'Single Malt Whisky.'"
          I feel much the same, though my spirituous revelation didn't happen anywhere in Scotland - and it happened well before I met my Scottish partner. I was already a faithful drinker of single malts by the time I met the Scot.
          It was another man who, one evening, asked me what I was drinking. "Whisky." I said, and his interest was piqued. Which whisky did I favour? - and he reeled off a few of the single malts.
          "Oh, just get me a whisky," I said, in my ignorance. "Doesn't matter which one - I don't believe in all that marketing hype about single malts."
          He was offended. It was not mere marketing hype, he said. A single malt was vastly superior to the cheap, blended stuff. It was made in the place it was named after, from local water and grain. It was lovingly aged - and ya-da-yah, as I thought then, he spouted all the marketing rubbish about sherry and oak casks.
          "It's just branding," I said. "It's just an excuse to charge more."
          Allow him, he said, to do me a kindness and prove me wrong. Allow him, if I would, to buy me a couple of different single malts. Taste them, and then tell him that there was no difference between them and the likes of Jack Daniels, Bell and Johnnie Walker.
          Well, okay, I said, if you're paying.

          I always liked whisky best, of all spirits, ever since I used to sip from older relatives' glasses as a child. But whenever I drank it, the harshness of the alcohol made me shudder to my toes. That was the price, I thought, of liking whisky. You had to put up with the shudder.
  

        I can't remember which whiskys the gentleman bought me. Since he knew he was dealing with a beginner, it was probably a couple of the softer ones. Maybe a Glenfiddich or a Glenlivit for one - they are light, pale yellow and have a lemony, citrusy taste. And perhaps a richer, fruit-cakey one, aged in sherry-casks, such as an Aberlour.
          And it was a spiritual revelation. I drank and I didn't shudder. I realised what 'smooth' means, when applied to spirit. The single malts were so well made and aged that they slipped down with nothing more than a warm glow - and a wealth of flavours.

          Once you're converted, there are so many to try! Jura, Auchentosh, Glenmorangie, Talisker, Dalwhinnie, Craganmore...
All of them a little different. When I did meet the Scot, he told me that his father had been a whisky cooper, and in the course of cooping barrels for many different distilleries, had sampled many, many different whiskys. It was his experienced and considered opinion that the best of them all was a 10-year old Macallan. It didn't, to his taste, improve for being 12, 15 or 30 years old. The ten year old Mac: that was the one.
          And it is excellent - as is Bushmills Irish single malt, though the Scots of my acquaintance frown on Irish whiskys (and, for that matter, American and Japanese 'whiskys.' If it's not from Scotland, it's not whisky, is their thinking.)
          Personally, though, after years of trying different single malts, I'm coming to the conclusion that the best of the lot is, as many agree, Islay's Laphroig. (It's pronounced 'La-FROYg.)

          Scots friends have put forward Lagvulan as their favourite. It's very good - I've yet to meet a single malt I didn't like - but good as it is, it's not Laphroig. 

          I didn't think so when I first tasted Laphroig, years ago. I thought it smelled and tasted like burning rubber or kippers. I much preferred the lighter malts, like Glenfiddich or Oban. Or Highland Park from the Orkneys.
          But, gradually, I learned to like it. Peat smoke and honey is one of those poetic tasting descriptions for Laphroig, and the last time I drank some, I could appreciate what that meant. I could taste the sweeter honey notes coming through the harshness of smoke and iodine. I had another spiritual revelation: I realised I loved Laphroig.

          Still, it doesn't matter: mild Glenfiddich or smoky Laphroig, or spicy Aberlour, or any of the others, there is no spirit that has so much warmth and so many layers and variations in flavour as single malt whisky. I love the stuff.
          I tried to repay the gent who convinced me of the worth of single malt a few months ago. I was passing the shelf of whisky in a well known supermarket, and saw a lady looking confused in front of them. So I went over to check out my next purchase (single malts are my only extravagance) and asked her which one she fancied herself.
          She told me she knew nothing about whisky, but had been charged by her friends with the task of buying a bottle for their retiring manager - who it seemed they all liked. He was a whisky drinker, she said, so they thought a bottle of - and she waved vaguely towards the blends. But now she was here, there were so many different kinds and she was confused.
          Buy him a single malt, I said. If he's a whisky drinker, he'll be grateful. I think I steered her to an Oban in the end - a little bit smoky, but with a spicy, citrus sweetness too.

          This blog comes to you with the faint, but very real hope, that a whisky distillery will be overcome with Christmas good cheer and grant me a lifetime's supply of single malt.
          Or even a single bottle. Go on.
          Just one.
          Go on, go on.

A Book's Colouring

At the moment I'm working on three books at the same time. I've always worked on two or more books at once.

I've always been aware that each book develops its own atmosphere and colouring - and that as I move from one book to another, the mental 'weather' can change drastically. But, while being aware of it, it's never been something that I've thought about very clearly, or tried to pin down, until now.

The Sterkarms, for instance. The colouring of the Sterkarm books is red and black, like their badge - and the colouring came first, before I decided on the badge. When I think of the books, or the work I have to do on the third book, this is what pulls together all the disparate characters, plot-lines, scene-settings and so on - the glowering red and black colouring.

For me, the Sterkarm books are dark, low rooms, half filled with peat smoke. A glimmer of red firelight flickers on the underside of the grey smoke. Embers glower redly.

The Sterkarm books have many scenes which take place outside, but in my mind, in this overall impression, the days are overcast, the sky thick and grey with cloud. The greens of the hillsides are dark, the bracken russet - all the colours tilt towards their darker shades.

But then, if I move to the other book I'm working on, Follow The Dogs, there's a big, instant change. The book is set is Scotland, as are the Sterkarm books - it's about a boy following herd dogs across Scotland, from Fife in the East, to the Isle of Mull in the West. He

Follow The Dogs by Susan Price

describes sheltering from bad weather, and grey, wet days - yet in my head, this book is fresh and bright. The hills are a brighter green, the sky blue. A fresh, cool wind blows through it. For me, the book is full of air and space - the view from the hills above Oban, across the sea to the Hebrides, with the water blazing like polished silver.

And take a third book. I've been dressing up my Story Collector, which is a series of folk-tales, told in the 'frame' of an elderly gentleman in the 19th Century. Mr. Grimsby, a retired manufacturer, collects stories from his maidservant, her grandmother, an old soldier, and others.

When I think of this 'frame', I see polished brown leather, brass and firelight. I smell the gas-lights that burned in the house I was born in, and coal burning in a grate.

But if I think of the stories told within the frames, I 'see' something altogether lighter - in fact, something very like the silhouettes I've

Art work: Andrew Price

been creating (with a lot of help from my brother) for the title page of each story. They remind me, a little, of the blue and white tiles used to decorate stoves and fireplaces.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it clearly, but the impressions I describe above are nothing to do with the descriptions of the scenes within each book. Instead, they are a sort of handle by which I can grab everything to do with a particular story and bring it together so I can enter it.

I mentioned it to my brother, and he immediately understood what I meant. He said it exists for paintings too. Before a painting exists, he said, while it's still only an idea in his mind, it has an atmosphere, a colouring, by which he can 'hold' it. Then, since he usually sketches first, before adding colour, he has to find the lines that form it. But even after he's found those lines, and what was once just an idea is firmly drawn - the picture still retains that mental colouring and atmosphere.

I'm curious to know if others recognise this. Do your books, your poems, your paintings each have their own unique colouring and atmosphere, which sum them up in your mind?

The Haunted Hotel Room

A friend of mine told me this story of something that happened to

My friend, who wishes to remain anonymous

him, and I've been saving it up for today.
          We were chatting, and he said, "I never used to believe in ghosts, but..." He wasn't going to get away without giving up the story after that.

          He used to 'travel in computers and accessories' - that is, he used to travel round a circuit, trying to convince various shops and stories to buy and stock all sorts of things, from laptops and tablets to novelty USB sticks.

          "You get to know various other salesmen in the same line," he said, "because you're always staying in the same cheap chain hotels and B&Bs. So, this trip, I was in ---- and staying at a ----- "

          He told me the exact name and location of the hotel. But I'm not going to write it down here. I'm not looking to be sued.

          "Anyway," he said, "when I looked into the restaurant that evening, I met up with a couple of other reps. I knew them slightly. One was in electronics, like me - the other was in sports gear. So we ate together and had a pint or two - but the thing was, when they saw my room number, they gave each other funny looks.

          "'You're not in room 265?' says the one.
         "I said, 'Why? What's wrong with it? Gets a lot of noise, does it?'
          "They went through the funny looks routine again. Shock, horror, he's in room 265. Are you going to tell him, or shall I? That sort of business. 'Come on,' I said. 'Out with it.'

          "'That room's haunted,' the computer bloke said. 'Ask if you can change it.'

          "'I wouldn't sleep in that room for a year's pay,' says the bloke in sports.

          "'What?' I says. 'Have you slept in it?' No, 'course he hadn't - but he'd heard about people who had, and -

          "'Oh, FOAF,'" I said. They didn't get it. 'Friend of a friend,' y'know. These things always happen to a friend of a friend, don't they? Never to the person telling you about it. I told 'em only kids believe in ghosts.
          "In fact, I scoffed so much, they never got around to telling me what was supposed to happen in room 265 - we got off onto some other stupid subject. Aliens or Area 51 or something.

 

'Aliens or Area 51 or something...'

        "Anyway, I went up to my room about eleven, and turned in soon after. It was a completely standard hotel room - y'know, little bathroom, a bed, a desk, a tv. I've lost count of the number of nights I've spent in hotel-rooms exactly like it. I had a quick shower, watched a bit of tv, switched off the light and settled down. I'd forgotten everything they'd said about ghosts.

          I was just starting to drift off, when the bed moved - and I was sleeping alone! There was a jolt, like someone had sat on the edge of the bed.

          I sat up like a jack-in-the-box. It was so real. I had no doubt at all that somebody was in my room and had sat on the edge of the bed. I snapped on the light. Nothing, of course. Just the hotel room, and my things on the desk and chair, where I'd left 'em.

          I got up and looked around. I had some idea that one of the others had got into my room and was playing tricks - but unless some member of the hotel staff had let them in, they couldn't have done. I hadn't heard the door open - and like most of these doors, they're heavy and fire-proof. Hard to open quietly.

          In the end, I decided that my imagination was playing me up. I'd been drifting off - it could have been a sort of half-dream. And even though I'd forgotten the talk about the room being haunted, it could have planted the idea in my head.

          "So I got back into bed and settled down again.I was asleep, or near as damn it, when there was a cold draught at my back - and then a puff of cold air on my ear, and a voice, a woman's voice, said, 'I'm glad the door's locked.'
          "I was standing by the room's door, with the light on and my heart pounding like Desert Orchid's on the winning stretch. I don't remember getting there.
          "I was looking at the blandest of bland hotel rooms. Y'know: dark blue carpet, beige walls, white covers on the bed. Apart from my few things, it was neat and boring and clean - and like ten thousand other hotel rooms all over the world.
          "My heart rate started slowing down, and I felt a bit of a fool. Fancy letting those two idiots get to me. And that place was so blah that the ghost of a vanilla yoghurt would have turned it down as not sinister enough to haunt.
          "I had a drink from the fridge and watched a bit of late night telly. Listened to people tramping past in the corridor outside and slamming firedoors. After an hour, I went to bed again, feeling really shattered. This time, nothing was keeping me awake.
          "Now imagine this. Imagine you're all warm and toasty - and an ice-cube touches you. I want you to really imagine that freezing touch. The way the shock jolts you. The way the ice clings to your skin. The way the shudder goes right through you to the other side.
          "That's what woke me. Only it wasn't an ice-cube. It was a hand, a cold hand. On my chest. And an arm, reaching over me from behind. A woman was in bed with me, pressing against my back and reaching around to hug me - and she was icy, freezing. Like a randy snowman had climbed into bed with me.
          "An icy kiss pressed against my neck - and that was when I raced into reception, at three in the morning, in my underpants.
          "Don't remember anything else - except suddenly realising I was in reception, looking at the night-clerk, in nothing but my socks and Y-fronts. (Yes, I wear Y-fronts. Shut up.)
          "I wouldn't go back upstairs either. The night-staff had to let me hide behind their desk and find me a coat to wear, while they went up and moved my luggage from room 265 to another room on

another floor.
          "I didn't get any sleep that night. I kept thinking she might find out what room I'd moved to.

'There's nothing I want to know...'

          "The next morning, at breakfast, when my friends asked me how I'd slept - well, I opened my shirt and showed them the red-blue mark of a woman's hand on my chest. And the bruise on my neck.'"

          "Did you ever find out anything about the ghost?" I asked. "I mean, was someone murdered in that room, or what?"
          "The only thing I know about that ghost," he said, "is that she has great taste in men. Apart from that, there's nothing I want to know. And she won't be getting a second date."

And if you believe this is a true story, told to me by a friend, then I am your Granny's great-uncle Jim.

Copyright Susan Price.

Overheard in a Graveyard

This is an excellent collection - varied, emotive and well-judged. Highly recommended. - Amazon review.

 

                                  Nightcomers

'Every tale shows the quality of the imagination, and the accuracy of the telling. What most impresses is the authority of Susan Price's voice: exact, rich or spare when necessary, able to evoke the Past without falsity, and the present without effort.'
(The Guardian.)

 

 

  

Hauntings

'This collection… has a depth of emotion that is at times disturbing.' Magpie,

'Her Lines, My Lines' - a review

     My friend, Joan Lennon, has many talents - as you can discover

Author Joan Lennon

here, on her website.

     Having the sense to live in Scotland is one talent. Being quick and witty is another.
     I've admired her poems for a long time. Like Joan's photos, they often focus on a vivid detail, which might go overlooked by others. They make us look again, and see.

     Her Lines, My Lines has poems by Joan, and illustrations by Kyla Tomlinson. It came out of a six-month Writer-in-Residence post, based in Blairgowrie, funded by Creative Scotland. They do better by their writers in Scotland.
     There are so many poems in this book I would like to bring to your attention, but there are only 14 in the book, and I'd end up putting the whole lot into this post - which would not be right. But I can give you a taster...

She said, "They're not your boys - they're grown men."

...When I am rich soil

And quieted by time,

I will shift and stir,

restless still in rhythm

With your sleeplessness.

      One long sequence of poems is The Week It Snowed. Joan captures the changing light and colour of snow and the north:

in the evening,

periwinkle (prussian in the shadows)

fades through glaucous

into slate.

     She sees Lichen on a Gravestone.

...in ruckled puffs

like tangible sky breath -

slow fireworks...

     I am butchering these poems because I don't want to be guilty of giving away someone else's work for free - but they deserve to be read in full. Again and again a few words, a phrase, captures and fills my head with an image or sensation.

The book can be bought here - http://www.bookmarkblair.com/shop.php

Joan's other books for children and adults are worth checking out too. You can find them here.