Posted in Personal life, Writing

That’s So Last Year: My Magazine Columns for November & December

photo of snowy tops of roof and trees
View from my study window after the snowfall before Christmas

Thanks to the unexpected consequences of a snowfall before Christmas, I’ve fallen way behind on my blog.

Who knew that snow and internet don’t mix? Our snow felled an overhead cable, cutting off our broadband and phone line for nearly a week. This crisis was resolved only when a team of engineers dug up the road to fix it. I’m still not sure how snow affected subterranean cables, but so pathetically grateful was I to have the service restored that I was not about to query their methods.

Snow and ice also took out our Sky TV. The satellite dish was covered in snow and ice, and Sky’s technical advice when this happens is simply to wait for the thaw.

photo of Dorothy looking out of my study window into the snow
To Dorothy, a window is as good as a television screen – she was transfixed by the snow, chasing individual flakes as they fell

After that, I allowed real life to take over from the internet (well, it was Christmas), so I’m now starting my new blogging year already way behind. I haven’t even got round yet to sharing here the monthly columns I write for two local magazines, the Hawkesbury Parish News and the Tetbury Advertiser, and the guest posts I write on the 30th of every month for the Authors Electric collective.

I’m torn: I like to share all those things on here not only so that I have a central record of all my writing, but also because many of you tell me they enjoy reading the columns, because they give insight into life in the rural community that has inspired my  Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries, and the Authors Electric post because it’s always about my writing.

But I don’t want to bombard my readers with a string of belated posts.

So what I’m going to do instead is tack those belated columns to the bottom of this post, and then carry on with my new blog plan for 2018, which is to post every Wednesday about aspects of my writing life, such as book news and extracts, event plans and reports and reading recommendations

If you have a particular question to ask about my writing life, don’t hesitate to ask, and I’ll add it to my list of blog post ideas for 2018.

Wishing you a very happy New Year full of peace, joy, love, health, fulfillment and great books!

And if you don’t want to catch up with those missing posts, click away now…


AUTHORS ELECTRIC NOVEMBER 2017

It ain’t what you tell, it’s the way that you tell it: in which Debbie Young tries not to lose the plot

Most authors at some point in their writing lives will come across the advice that there are ONLY SEVEN BASIC PLOTS – or maybe nine, or thirty-six, or various other numbers, depending on whom you consult.

If you’re the glass-half-empty type, it’s easy to think:

“Oh no, how can I ever hope to be original? Someone will have got there before me!”

Whereas glass-half-full types like me may think:
“Well, Shakespeare just took existing stories and upcycled them into his plays – if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, who am I to complain?”

Those who can’t even see the glass are probably best advised to throw down their pen and take up golf instead.

The BEST thing to do is, of course, to take your choice of basic plot and wrap around it your choice your characters, themes, setting, etc etc to produce a final story that only you could write.

How Shall I Write It? Let Me Count the Ways

photo of pen nib
(Photo by MJS on Unsplash)

(Photo by MJS on Unsplash)

I took as my starting point for my latest cosy mystery novel, Murder in the Manger, one of the oldest stories in modern culture, the nativity. Sophie Sayers, the central character in this series, writes her own version of the classic Bible nativity story for the village primary school and local amateur dramatic association in the Cotswold village of Wendlebury Barrow, to which she’s recently moved.

The performance of her script is a story-within-a-story, or rather a play-within-a-play (yes, Shakespeare got there before me on that too, with the “rude mechanicals” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). It’s a plot device which complements the themes of transformation and restoration that are wrapped around it in the novel’s main plot and various subplots.

Sophie’s Choice of Story

Sophie’s telling of the nativity includes a lot of humour, including in-jokes for the villagers, (the Innkeeper is the school admissions officer, for example), without ever being disrespectful of the Bible story or offensive to believers. At the end, the vicar even compliments her on making the story more accessible to the audience than a more erudite approach such as the medieval mystery plays, which also get a mention in the story.

I don’t know how many other novels have retold the nativity, as I have in this book – but I think even such a well-known and simple plot can be endlessly reworked and still be compelling. As Sophie’s friend Ella reassures her, when she’s worrying about whether her play will work:

You’re on to a winner, no matter what. No-one can complain that the plot is flawed, or that they can’t work out which character is which, or what their motivation is. Your audience will be determined to enjoy it, come what may. They’ll mostly be related to someone in the cast, so they’ll be willing the production to succeed. You don’t have to worry about technical hitches, because you’re not using any technology – no lights, no microphones, no recordings. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, this being Wendlebury Barrow, things do go wrong – and by the end of the first chapter, the whole congregation gathered to watch the play is accused of murder by a mysterious stranger.

But my point remains:

a basic plot can be retold in numerous different ways without losing its power

Rather than run through a list of other written interpretations of the Christmas story, I thought I’d go visual to reinforce my point…

photo of postcards of stained glass window nativity scenes
Stained glass windows were one of the earliest means of telling the nativity story – postcard images of the Burne Jones windows in Winchester Cathedral by Dr John Crook

And into three dimensions… Not far from where I live, St John’s Church in Chipping Sodbury has just started its annual Crib Festival, which each Advent displays over a hundred different models of the stable scene, contributed by all kinds of people from toddlers to professional craftsmen, with materials as diverse as Lego and coconut shells. I’m looking forward to my annual visit there to remind myself of the many different ways to tell a story.

Click here to view the church’s gallery showing the nativity story told in countless ways – each of them engaging in its own right

The Story Around the Story

And if you’d like to find out what happens next in Murder in the Manger, you can order it from all good bookstores, on the High Street and online, in paperback or as an ebook.

Here’s the Amazon link for the UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Manger-Village-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B074SZLZ6P/

Here’s the Amazon link for the US:
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Manger-Village-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B074SZLZ6P

 


HAWKESBURY PARISH NEWS – NOVEMBER 2017

A Nook for Books

Photo of inglenook bench seat with cushions, fairy lights, etc
My new reading nook, with handy cat cafe beneath for Dorothy

Sunday supplements’ suggestions for home improvements usually evoke hollow laughter in our house: the gift-wrapping room (who gives enough presents to justify dedicating a whole room to the activity?); the return of wallpaper (at £1,000+ a roll); the subterranean swimming pool (like something from a James Bond villain’s lair).

So the latest trend, the Book Nook, took me by surprise. As soon as I read about it, I wanted one.

What’s a Book Nook?

A cosy corner reserved for curling up with a good book, furnished with copious cushions and throws to keep you cosy while you escape into the pages of your current read.

A Book Nook doesn’t require much investment, provided you can find a little space somewhere in your house. That may be easier than you think. We’ve just created one from a disused inglenook fireplace, previously used primarily as a repository for the cat’s bowls where we wouldn’t fall over them.

Which leads me to suggest that the best way to identify a potential Book Nook in your house is simply to follow your cat.

Cats like to hang out in cosy corners: wide, sunny windowsills, empty alcoves, the cupboard under the stairs, even the airing cupboard. What could be cosier?

So our new Book Nook is where I’ll be heading in future when I want to lose myself in a good book, though I may have to fight the rest of the family, and probably the cat too, for the space.

Once you’ve identified your nook, if you find you’re lacking a book, just head up to the Hawkesbury Stores for the solution to your problem. I’ll be filling the book corner, at the back right of the shop, with carefully selected second-hand books for all tastes and occasions, with all proceeds going to the Stores, alongside a collection of new books by local authors.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my Book Nook…


TETBURY ADVERTISER – NOVEMBER 2017

When Every Night is Fireworks Night

Cover of the November issue of the Tetbury Advertiser
The November issue of the Tetbury Advertiser

The Lord Mayor of London’s proposal to abolish woodburners in the city’s Emission Zone should not have affected us out here in rural Gloucestershire, with our abundant supply of fresh air and local logs. I don’t know whether there’s a fuel equivalent to food miles, denoting how far a product travels from source to point of use, but the journey of some of the wood burned in our house can be measured in metres rather than miles.

Even so, his announcement made me realise that it was time to replace my ancient woodburning stove with a more efficient, less polluting contemporary model.

The stove itself had been hinting to us for some time that it was ready for retirement. Bits kept falling off it, and running repairs had become more frequent. By the end of last winter, we’d reached the point at which closing its multi-paned double doors had turned into a Chinese puzzle. Unfortunately, I’ve always been very bad at doing Chinese puzzles.

The stove’s efficiency was also decreasing. This went against the (wood)grain in a household fitted with solar panels, supplied by electricity from sustainable sources (Ecotricity), and populated by habitual wearers of jumpers, thermals and boots throughout the winter.

Considering that we’d bought it twenty-five years ago, second-hand, for £150, we didn’t feel it owed us anything. So we made for the nearest stove showroom, prepared to splash out. We plumped for the most environmentally-friendly woodburner on display, designed to burn wood at the optimum temperature for fuel efficiency, while minimising emissions and particulates. In short: more heat for less logs – and a conscience as clear as the new stove’s window.

Now in pride of place in our inglenook stands a neat iron box with one large rectangular window in its single door. The stove’s size and shape remind me of the television we had when I was a child, and it’s just as compelling to watch. Its clever design keeps the glass forever clear, providing a constant display of flames and sparks from an ever-changing array of kindling and logs. It’s like having a Guy Fawkes’ Night display in the comfort of my own front room.

But best of all, the fire works.

I wish you a cosy November, however you choose to keep warm.

 


HAWKESBURY PARISH NEWS – DECEMBER 2017

Lighting Up Time

cover of Lighting Up Time
This short story set at the winter solstice is available as an ebook and a tiny paperback

We’re fast approaching the shortest days of the year, when in cloudy weather it feels as if it never really gets light at all.

Successive days and nights meld into one long chunk of darkness, like a forgotten bag of boiled sweets that have congealed into a single, indigestible lump.

I was therefore pleased to read in last month’s Parish News a call from Councillor Sue Hope to light up our windows on the evening of 9th December to coincide with the switching-on of Lee’s lights and the illumination of the Christmas tree on the Plain.

Actually, I’ve been channelling my inner druid since about Halloween, turning on the string of coloured lights at the front of my house to brighten up dark evenings and drive away the SAD. By that I don’t mean repelling gloomy door-to-door salesmen, but Seasonal Affective Disorder, the form of depression induced by winter months.

A few years ago, before peak Scandimania, there was a trend to display little wooden arches of electric lights, candle-style, in our front windows. The last couple of festive seasons, these seem to have all but disappeared, perhaps naturally extinguished as their bulbs failed and couldn’t be replaced.

Such are lightbulbs, and such is life. Lighting up your windows on 9th December will be more than just an act of community. It’s an assertion that despite the darkness of these dreary winter days, we stand on the cusp of a whole new year of village life. All we need to do is keep the faith, and the sunny summer days that bring the Hawkesbury Show will roll round again, no matter how far off they might seem now.

I wish you all a bright and merry Christmas, and a peaceful New Year full of life and light.

 


TETBURY ADVERTISER – DECEMEBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 (double issue)

The Time-Travelling Shopping Basket

cover of the December issue of the Tetbury Advertiser
December issue of the Tetbury Advertiser

When you reach a certain stage in life, it becomes nigh impossible to know what you’d like for Christmas. Once you’ve paid off your mortgage and got the kids into net profit, if you want something, you buy it for yourself, regardless of the time of year.

Or at least you do if, like me, you are a spendthrift but with modest tastes. I’m in that happy stage between the habitual end-of-month overdraft of the heavily mortgaged and the mid-life crisis for which the prescribed cure is a sports car.

Consequently, until yesterday, my Christmas wish list was blank. Then, walking instead of driving up the road to buy a few groceries, (my usual car habit done for the sake of speed – if only Father Christmas could bring me more hours in the day, I’d put them on my list every year), I realised I longed for an old-fashioned shopping trolley.

Not the horrid trolley only ever seen in supermarkets and upside down in ponds; nor the aluminium, nylon-bagged kind; nor even the medically-oriented type with so many functions that it almost qualifies as a caravan: shopping bag, seat, balance aid. No, what I crave is the old-fashioned wicker basket on two wheels, pulled by a long wooden handle that looks like a walking stick sent out to work for its living. My grandmother, born in 1900, used hers on every expedition to her local shopping parade in the London suburb in which I grew up.

Grandma’s trolley held just enough shopping for a few meals, plus a ball of knitting wool from her named box at Rema’s, the drapers. (We bought our jumpers in installments in those days.) She could always squeeze in a quarter of sweets from the sweetshop too. Her every-other-day shopping habit had been formed when food was bought in small quantities, fresh, dried or in cans, before the fridge, never mind the freezer, had become commonplace.

When I shared a photo of such a trolley on Facebook yesterday, several friends confessed they wanted one too. We thought if we all acquired one, we might make them fashionable. After all, they do chime with the trend to shop local and on foot, rather than in a stressful supermarket sweep by car.

But my Christmas present won’t just be a low-emission form of shopping transport. It will also be a time machine, taking me back to the days before globalisation, when a trip to the shops with Grandma meant me begging for a turn to pull her wicker shopping basket on wheels. Eagerly I’d clasp the wooden handle, burnished smooth by constant use, as were Grandma’s silken hands, stilled so long ago. Perhaps the imperative to shop local on foot isn’t the real reason that I want a wicker trolley after all.

Whatever is on your Christmas list, I hope you’ve been good enough all year for Santa to oblige. And if not, there’s always 2018.


Well, that’s my blog all up to date now! Stay tuned for the first “proper” post of 2018 on Wednesday…

 

Posted in Personal life, Writing

What To Do When There Aren’t Enough Hours in the Day

Cover image of Tristram Shandy book showing man facing grim reaper in skeletal form
Confronting the fact that our time is limited

As a compulsive writer, I sometimes find it stressful that I never have enough time to write everything I want, either on paper (where my fiction writing first takes shape) or on my blogs.

Besides this Young By Name blog, I have a new(ish) book blog at www.debbieyoungsbookblog.com and a book marketing advice blog for authors, www.otsbp.com, not to be confused with the author advice blog that I edit for the Alliance of Independent Authors at www.selfpublishingadvice.org.

This morning, for example, I’ve been staring at a list of topics and events I need to write up while they’re still fresh in my mind, including recent writers’ festivals that I’ve attended and some social occasions. I know that another day will go by before I manage to make a start on them thanks to some pressing deadlines for some paid freelance work. Continue reading “What To Do When There Aren’t Enough Hours in the Day”

Posted in Personal life, Writing

Tiptoeing into the New Year (2015)

Welcome to my first blog post of the New Year!

Debbie writing with a pen on paper
Sometimes the pen is mightier than the keyboard

Well, did you miss me? Did you notice I’ve been offline for a bit? Probably not – if you’ve got any sense, you’ll have spent a lot of time offline over Christmas too.

But I have to say I’m greeting the first working week of the New Year with renewed energy and enthusiasm, after spending as much time as possible away from my computer during my daughter’s two-week break from school.

When I furtively dipped back into the internet now and again during the holiday fortnight, it was effectively under cover – I’d set up an out-of-office message to cover my two email accounts: the online equivalent of dark glasses.

In fact, if I hadn’t been part of Helen Hollick’s fabulous Christmas Party Blog Hop, I’d have spend even less time online. Reading the other participants’ fascinating posts was the main reason that I sneaked back to my computer at all.

Why Christmas Isn’t Over Yet…

Blog hop logo
Catch it before it’s too late!

What do you mean, you didn’t read the 25 fabulous articles on the blog hop, on different aspects of Christmas traditions and with plenty of festive fiction samples to enjoy?

Fear not, there’s still time to catch them with a clear conscience, because, as I’ve just discovered, Christmas isn’t actually over just yet. I’m not talking about waiting for Twelfth Night (today, 5th January, according to some people, or tomorrow, 6th, for others, including me). The vicar’s letter in the new Hawkesbury Parish News states that the festive season doesn’t officially conclude until Candlemas on 2nd February. Now there’s the excuse Laura was looking for to keep the Christmas tree up for a little longer.

ALLi logoIn the meantime, I’m back in the room – and I’ve just been blogging about the benefits of going offline on the advice blog of Alliance of Independent Authors. You can read that post here, if you’re interested: Don’t Let the Internet (Tail) Wag the Author (Dog)

  • What’s the longest you can bear to stay offline – or indeed online?
  • Do you have a top tip to share on avoiding internet burnout?
  • Feel free to join the conversation via the comment box below!
Posted in Reading, Travel, Writing

Travels With My Blog

Our camper van outside Linlithgow Palace, Scotland
Our camper van, precariously parked outside Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, last summer

As regular readers will know, one of the most frequent topics on this blog is travel, usually involving our family motorhome (posh name) / camper van (what we usually call it). But when I was giving my website a New Year makeover, it  occurred to me that there’s one sort of travel that I’ve neglected to mention here – and that’s virtual travel.

Have Blog, Will Travel

No, I haven’t devised a Star-Trek style teleporter – though I’d love one of those, if I could be confident that on arrival at my destination all my molecules would be reassembled in exactly the right place. What I’m talking about is guest blogging – where I’ve hopped across the ether to write a guest post on somebody else’s blog.

Just before Christmas, for example, I managed to appear both in the USA and Greece on the same day, thanks to two blogging friends, the US author Amira Makansi and writer/musician Jessica Bell, who is based in Athens, Greece, but comes from Australia, which pleasingly allows me to squeeze another continent into this conversation.

About Amira Makansi

Amira Makansi
Amira Makansi

I met Amira via the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), whose Self-Publishing Advice blog I edit. I was intrigued to learn that she had co-written her debut novel The Sowing with two other writers  – her mother and her sister. She kindly wrote about her experience on the ALLi blog, then invited me back to hers to be interviewed about my own book, Coming To Terms With Type 1 Diabetes. You can read my interview – and lots of interesting posts by Amira and other guest bloggers – on her blog here.

Introducing Jessica Bell

Jessica Bell
Jessica Bell

Jessica Bell is another ALLi friend, a live wire with endless creative talents: she writes brilliant novels, poems and music. Though based in Athens, she also runs an annual Writers’ Retreat in Ithaca, mythical home of Odysseus and Penelope. Not quite as mythical as, say, Atlantis – it does actually still exist, as I can personally testify – I went there quite a few times in my pre-motherhood sailing days. It’s hard to imagine anywhere more peaceful or beautiful to pamper your muse. This probably makes Jess just about the coolest person I know.

One of the many other plates that Jessica spins is her blog The Alliterative Allomorph (yes, I also had to look up Allomorph in the dictionary), and every Wednesday she invites a guest blogger to sound off about any writing-related topic of their choice. Just before Christmas, she hosted a festive-themed post by me,. I realise this does not have the same topical appeal in early January, but it was great fun to write, allowing me to segue from my own frivolous, hot-off-the-virtual-press Christmas ebook to what in my opinion is the greatest ever Christmas novel – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. There’s something about Jess’s blog that makes me want to talk about the greats, because last time I was on there, I talked about Tolstoy.

A Virtual Paper Chain

Helen Hollick
Helen Hollick

I also took part last month in a mass blogging event, known as a blog hop. This requires a number of bloggers to blog on the same theme, at the same time, and link to each other’s posts, leading readers on an ethereal tour. This one was held on 21st December, the shortest day (in the northern hemisphere, anyway), and took as its theme “Casting Light Upon the Darkness”. Historical novelist Helen Hollick kindly organised this mass blog, which meant coordinating 30 bloggers in different locations and time zones, and it was fascinating to see each author’s individual take on the subject. You can see Helen’s starting point here, but if you want to hop straight to my post, you’ll find it here.

So those were my December outings. In future, whenever I write guest posts or am interviewed on other people’s blogs, I’ll be adding links here so that you can read them in situ – and while you’re at it, you’ll gain an introduction to another great blog too!

By the way, I also regularly host or interview other author bloggers on my Off The Shelf Book Promotions website:  www.otsbp.com – but more about that another day. 

Follow That Blog!

If all that blog-hopping is making you dizzy, there are two simple ways that you can keep up with my online wanderings without having to remember to click on my blog every week:

  • sign up to receive each new post in your email inbox by clicking the “follow” button
  • subscribe to my new e-newsletter, which provides will give you a monthly round-up of my online activity within a single email, once a month

You’ll find instructions on how to do both of these things in the right hand column on the home page of my blog.

And finally… happy New Year, wherever you happen to be, online or in the real world!

Posted in Personal life

The Electronic Grapevine

Image of explosion on ship in Falklands War
Smoke signals from the Falklands War

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how quickly the digital age has revolutionised the speed of news transmission. As a radio documentary recently reminded me, only 30 years ago news stories and photos from the frontline of the Falklands War often took two weeks to reach the news headlines.

As I’m the first to complain about the lethargy of our local internet service, for the sake of fairness, I would like to confess a change of heart. Recently, via my computer tucked away in darkest Hawkesbury Upton, I was able to pick up news of the pope’s appointment even while the white smoke was still wafting out of a Vatican chimney. (How slow must the Pope’s wifi be if lighting a fire is the quicker than sending an email? )

By chance, I had my Twitter account open when up popped “New pope” on the “trends” list – a handy menu tab that flags up the most talked-about subjects of the moment. These are often, but not always, breaking news stories.

Always eager to experience history in the making, I immediately clicked to the page that showed the latest “new pope” messages. At that second, there flashed up on the screen, a message from the Vatican’s very own Twitter account, @Pontifex: “Habeamus Papem Franciscum” – Latin for “We have Pope Francis”.

A Pope tweeting in Latin? Now there’s an enchanting meeting of ancient and modern. I wonder whether he could tell me the Latin word for “internet”?

(This post was originally written for the April 2013 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News)

If you liked this post, you might enjoy my other recent article inspired by the Pope: Nominal Determinism, Pope Francis and Other Keywords I Have Loved