As an optimist, I prefer the anticipation of what’s to come, rather than harvest.
Spring is my favorite season, with its bright buds and brilliant blossom. Second best is summer, with long daylight hours always a source of pleasure.
I can even reconcile myself to September for its often bright, crisp days and occasional spell of Indian summer weather. But the arrival of October, with shortening days and falling leaves, has until this year made my spirits sink.
My latest novel – published in November, set at Easter (Available in paperback and ebook)
In this column for the December 2018 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News, I get ahead of myself with the seasons
In the retail trade, buyers plan at least a season ahead. While we’re Christmas shopping, they’re planning their stock for the spring.
I share their sense of being out of step with nature’s calendar. Today, for example, the deadline of the Hawkesbury Parish News’s December issue, I launched my latest novel, Springtime for Murder. I wrote it in the summer months, edited it in the autumn, and it’s set at Easter. Now I’m about to start writing a novel that takes place in May. No wonder I have to stop to think what month it is in the real world.
It doesn’t help that I can’t rely on the weather to give me a natural steer on the seasons. With it often so unseasonably hot/cold/wet/dry, a glance out of the window can be misleading.
The first four books in the series run from midsummer to Valentine’s Day
Taking a break from my desk to go grocery shopping does nothing to put me straight. Why are supermarket shelves still full of fresh summer fruits in the winter? Every time I go to Waitrose lately, there are punnets of strawberries reduced for quick sale, because the shop has more than it can sell. Still, at least I’m full of Vitamin C to guard against winter colds.
Thank goodness for the man-made visual clues around the village. Impressively carved pumpkins dotted around the village heralded Halloween. Mid-November, the poppies on the Plain and in St Mary’s ensured we remember the date we should never forget. Now the Christmas lights will soon be upon us.
Even so, if you see me shivering in a summer dress in December, now you’ll know the reason why: I’ll have simply lost the plot. Which really shouldn’t happen to an author.
I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
PS And if you fancy some seasonal reading that is just right for December…
In the third Sophie Sayers Village Mystery, her school nativity play goes off-script from the opening line12 short stories that are the perfect antidote pre-Christmas stressA sweet but spooky story the longest night of the yearA fun short story inspired by mishearing a snippet of news on BBC Radio 4
A report on my appearance on BBC Radio Gloucestershire’s Chris Baxter Show yesterday
“I love this book! It’s festive, fun and a bit silly at times!” said BBC Radio Gloucestershire presenter Chris Baxter yesterday, when I was a guest on his excellent afternoon show. “It gets your imagination going, which stories at Christmas need to do.”
I’d been invited to talk about Stocking Fillers, my Christmas book of short stories, and I was thrilled to hear that Chris had been enjoying reading it on the train on his way to work that morning. We talked about the writing process, when I’d started writing them (high summer! – more about that here), and the challenge of writing short pieces.
After that, I was invited to read extracts from some of my favourite stories, which of course I was very pleased to do. I can now describe the book as “as featured on BBC Radio”, which is a terrific endorsement.
As ever, it was a joy to take part in a BBC Radio Gloucestershire programme, and I came away, as always, so impressed with what a great job they do bringing the community together and spreading goodwill throughout the county, not only at Christmas but all year round.
At a Christmas fair
And this time, there was also something else to take away: a request from Chris Baxter for some ghost stories for next Christmas. Hmmm, I’ll have to give that one some thought…
In the meantime, if you’d like to listen to interview, for the next month you can catch up with it on BBC iPlayer here:
Stocking Fillers is in the left hand window, in the centre at the front
If you’re in Gloucestershire and would like to pick up a last-minute, er, stocking filler, the book’s currently stocked at four local independent shops:
The Cotswold Bookroom in Wotton-under-Edge
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop (branches in Tetbury and Nailsworth)
The Hawkesbury Shop (general village store)
And you can download an ebook from online retailers at any time. (Paperback also available for online purchase.)
Merry Christmas reading, folks!
Julia Forster and me outside the Nailsworth branch of the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, where we’d just delivered new stocks our the books we’re holding
(This post was written for the December 2014 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News)
Thinking of summer in midwinter
With the shortest day fast approaching, I’m already thinking about Spring. That’s because I’m starting to plan a collection of short stories due to be released at Easter.
As in the world of fashion, if you’re planning to write topical fiction, you have to think at least one season ahead. I therefore started writing my festive short story collection, Stocking Fillers, while soaking up the Greek sun back in August. At first, it seemed seem strange to be writing about Christmas while wearing a swimsuit. It got easier a couple of weeks later, when I spent a fortnight in Scotland. Although it was still only August, the weather was more like November. But as my daughter always likes to say, “We don’t go to Scotland for the weather”.
Now available to order in paperback from all good bookshops and online as an ebook
Available to buy as an ebook or in paperback from the start of December, Stocking Fillers consists of twelve short stories, all humorous, as various characters prepare for the big day. My favourites include a grumpy middle-aged dad penning his first Round Robin Christmas letter, a little boy wise beyond his years offering Santa time management advice, and a busy mum wondering how on earth she’ll fit in all of her chores before Christmas Eve. Not every character is loveable, and the stories aren’t all sugar-plum sweet, but I hope you’ll find them fun. If you’d like signed copies to give as gifts, just give me a shout and I’ll be happy to add a special message by hand.
(This post was originally written for the September edition of Hawkesbury Parish News, my local community’s newsletter)
My daughter Laura as Carnival Queen’s attendant at this year’s Village Show
Twenty-three years ago, when I was negotiating to buy my house in Hawkesbury Upton, there were four significant facts that I’m glad I didn’t know at the time, because they’d have made the process much more stressful. But with hindsight it seems remiss of the estate agent not to have told me:
there is an excellent village primary school
the village is in the catchment area for an equally good secondary school, with admission pretty much guaranteed for anyone who lives here
the extraordinary annual village show – the undisputed highlight of the village year – would make me proud to call Hawkesbury Upton my home
climate change and the subsequent increased rainfall would make me very glad indeed to have a house on high ground
Laura ready for her first day at secondary school (still inadvertently wearing the purple sparkly nail polish from the Show)
All four of these factors have given me cause for celebration this year, when my daughter left the primary school with a glowing report, gained a place at KLB, and was picked as Carnival Queen’s Attendant for the Show – and on numerous occasions throughout the year we’ve watched copious rainwater flowing away from our house, downhill, down the middle of our road.
But as September begins, I’m mindful of two more facts omitted from the estate agent’s blurb that I was left to learn from my new neighbours:
the day of the village show is the last day of summer
when it’s jacket weather in Chipping Sodbury, it’s overcoat weather in Hawkesbury Upton
Perhaps that estate agent was smarter than I gave him credit for. Now where did I leave my overcoat?
