Tetbury - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Tales of the The Unexpected Book

Posted on February 7, 2013March 9, 2013 by Debbie Young

Beware of the Tetbury Advertiser – you never know where it might lead! I mean that in the nicest possible way, for a few years ago, the Advertiser was the starting point of a trail that led to the publication of my first book. Here’s the tale of how it came about.

Paul Newnton, author — Tetbury author Paul Newnton

In the summer of 2010, a few months after I’d started writing my Young By Name column in the Tetbury Advertiser, I was contacted by one of its regular readers, the writer Paul Newnton. Though now living on the other side of the country, he kept up with local news via a postal subscription to this popular monthly magazine. Having enjoyed my column, Paul asked me to help him promote his new novel, the first in a proposed series. Despite my protest that I had no experience of book promotion, I agreed to meet him for tea in the Snooty Fox on his next trip to Tetbury. With the help of an excellent cream tea, he convinced me that by drawing on my long career in journalism, PR and marketing, I could be of valuable assistance. He was right: within a very short time, I’d arranged for his book to be stocked in the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, generated news coverage in the local press, and fixed up an interview on BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

The author and publishing consultant Helen Hart — Helen Hart – the antidote to vanity publishers

A few weeks later, a graphic designer friend mentioned that his wife, who runs the Bristol-based assisted publishing company, SilverWood Books, was enjoying the online version of my Young By Name blog. We arranged to meet, and I came away with a commission to write a self-help promotion handbook for authors. The book was particularly to address the rapidly expanding group of self-published or independent authors – but what author doesn’t want to sell more books, even those commissioned by traditional publishers?

To explain the jargon, self-published authors are those who produce their books independently of traditional publishing companies. Thanks to the latest developments in digital printing and e-book technology, it’s possible to put your book on the market without a publisher’s contract, thus avoiding the nerve-wracking round of submissions and rejection letters. Authors who are willing and able to master the necessary technology do this themselves, but for technophobes – or for those who prefer to spend their time writing – there exist excellent publishing consultants who can do this for them, adding value and expertise. These are far removed from the “vanity publishers” of the past, who simply took your money and treated your manuscript as a routine print job, often with dire results.

To fulfil my commission, I undertook extensive research, interviewing many authors – including Tetbury’s Paul Newnton, of course – and members of the book trade, not least Hereward Corbett, proprietor of Tetbury’s Yellow-Lighted Bookshop.

Dr Alison Baverstock, MA Publishing Course Director at Kingston University — Dr Alison Baverstock, all-round publishing guru

Pre-publication, the first reviewer of Sell Your Books! was so enthusiastic that she even agreed to write a foreword. This was no small compliment, as this reviewer was Dr Alison Baverstock, senior lecturer in the MA in Publishing at Kingston University and all-round publishing guru. She deems it to give “motivating, practial and cheerful guidance on the process. It raises the spirits and promotes author confidence. It’s an investment in your writing now – and your future development.”

In another bizarre demonstration of all roads leading to Tetbury, I discovered that I’d met Alison a few years before, when I was working at Westonbirt School and she was guest speaker at Speech Day. I’d taken her photo to include in the school’s newsletter.

I hope that knowing its local origins and inspiration, authors living in and around Tetbury will take a special interest in my book. I’d love to hear any feedback or input from them, which I might also be able to share, with their permission, on my blog of book promotion tips for authors at Off The Shelf Book Promotions.

Cover image of Sell Your Books! by Debbie Young — All my own work

Finally, a big thank you to the wonderful Barry Gibbs, editor of the marvellous multi-faceted Tetbury Advertiser for commissioning my Young By Name column in the first place. Without you, none of this might have happened!

This post was originally written for the Tetbury Advertiser and appeared in its February 2013 edition.

Sell Your Books!, a book promotion handbook for authors, is now available to order from good bookshops and online. (RRP £8.99, ISBN 978-1-906236-34-2, Publisher SilverWood Books) It is also available as an e-book.
SilverWood Books provides helpful, expert and services to authors seeking to self-publish their books. For an initial chat, free of charge and with no obligation, please call Helen, Sarah or Joanna on 0117 910 5829 or visit their website: http://www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk
For more information about Paul Newnton and his books, visit his website or pop into the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop which stocks some copies and will always be happy to order more.

Personal life

How to Make A Weather Forecast More Meaningful

Posted on October 2, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

“Are pirates real, Mummy?” my daughter asks out of the blue one day.

As a child I lay awake in fear at night worrying about Captain Hook, so I’m anxious to allay her fears.

“No, darling, they’re only in stories like Peter Pan.”

A few days later, the BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news scuppers my deception with a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia. Laura looks at me accusingly.

“Oh, but they’re not pirates like Captain Hook,” I try to reassure her. “And there aren’t any in this country, anyway.”

The trouble lies in the terms of reference. To Laura, all pirates have wooden legs, parrots and hook hands, not motor launches and polybags of heroin.

The same problem crops up with the weather forecast. One morning the radio alarm wakes us up with a report about a tornado in Birmingham.

“But you told me we don’t get tornados in this country!”

“Well, not big ones, like the one in The Wizard of Oz,” I explain. “In Birmingham, there won’t have been any cattle swept up into the sky or barns blown flat – it will just have seemed a bit windy.”

Despite my attempt at reassurance, Laura is on the lookout for flying houses all day.

These national reporters of news and weather have a lot to answer for. They bandy about terms that may make good radio but which mean very little to us normal human beings. And when they do come up with a clear, evocative description – such as the infamous “barbecue summer” that the weathermen have been promising us these last two years – their promises usually turn out to be false. (Or maybe weather forecasters like barbecuing on cold rainy days. I suppose it would minimise the risk of starting a forest fire.)

So for this autumn I’ve formulated some new definitions that are much more meaningful to those of us living in the Cotswolds. Not for me the Richter scale of earthquakes (I was disappointed to find a friend experiencing a 4.5 reported in Amsterdam did not feel the earth move). Nor the anthropomorphising of hurricanes. Calling the latest one Irene did nothing to make her more amendable to my American friends stockpiling groceries and bottled water in their cellars. No, I’ll be using terms of reference that relate directly to what I see when I look out of my cottage window.

First, there’s the Tetbury Wind Scale. Force 1: autumn leaves are becalmed on trees. Force 2: a breeze flaps them about a bit. Force 3: the leaves depart the tree before their time. Force 4: twigs are blown down too. Force 5: look out! Bigger sticks are falling from the sky. Force 6: wind enough to fell a whole branch. Force 7: and the rest of the tree as well – beware of them on the roads as you drive to work. Force 8: Uh oh! Westonbirt Arboretum’s had to close while they make it safe – but there could be some nice carved wooden souvenirs on sale next summer.

Then there’s the Gloucestershire Snow Scale. Force 1 and we all just think how pretty it is, especially on the fields and trees. Force 2: we can still go about our daily business provided we take it slowly. By Force 4, only the 4x4s can make it through the lanes. Force 8 and you’ll need to find a friendly farmer and borrow his tractor.

And then there’s my Cotswold Drystone Wall weather gauge. Force 1 means you’ll spot the odd little trickle of tiny stones after a mild frost, whereas Force 8 is an avalanche: whole walls tumbling down either side of every main road. This in turn is a harbinger of a spring spent admiring the day-to-day progress of the skilled and hardy stone wallers repairing it as you drive to work.

I just hope it’s not going to be another Pothole Winter.

(This post was originally written for the October 2011 edition of The Tetbury Advertiser.)

Personal life

Tattoo or not tattoo? That is the question…

Posted on April 30, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Female Shoulder Flower Tattoo — Image by David Schexnaydre via Flickr

Unleashed from their hibernation by the recent summery weather, tattoos are appearing all around us. Even in the famously stylish Cotswolds, I can guarantee you’ll find one on a white shoulder near you. And even when that shoulder is sun-burnished to hot pink, the dark, brooding tones of the tattoo will still shine through.

Tattoos are constantly taking me by surprise. The most unlikely people have been showing me their latest acquisitions. On occasion it’s been as surprising as discovering that a polar bear has black skin – one of the many fascinating facts I’ve learned this term from my daughter’s school topic, “Pole to Pole”.

Taking a dip in a local public swimming pool, I was alarmed to discover that I was the only adult uniformly flesh-coloured. Surreptitiously surveying the other swimmers, I began to feel as undressed as if I’d forgotten my swimsuit. Even the children were not unblemished, thanks to the invention of the (mercifully) temporary tattoo. The closest we had to these when I was a child was “transfers”, all of which were small and square, and we’d buy them in great sheets from the paper shop for sixpence.

My small daughter Laura discovered temporary tattoos on holiday in Greece a few years ago, when she was 3. She spent a happy hour on the beach adorning her parents’ lazy bodies with colourful little pictures. I’ve always liked tiny vehicles for art. I’m a long-term collector of enamel pin-badges and I love postage stamps: Borrowers’ paintings in frilly frames . So at first I found the temporary tattoos not unappealing. Only that evening in a smart taverna did I realise that, to the uninformed observer, there is no discernible difference between the temporary kind and the permanent. The festoons of flowers adorning my husband’s shoulders attracted quizzical looks.

But at least we were on holiday so it didn’t particularly matter. Not so lucky was our friend Ida, who at a dinner party succumbed to Laura’s entreaty to put a tattoo on her forehead. The wine that had made this seem such a good idea at the time had lost its influence by the Monday morning, when she had to sit through an important business meeting, the tattoo still firmly in place. (Sellotape is the answer, by the way, should you ever find yourself in this position.)

I cannot imagine ever being prepared to commit to any one design for permanent adornment. There’s no item of clothing or accessory that I’d wear day in, day out, so how do people choose tattoos? Ignoring the obvious foible of etching your current partner’s name into your flesh (“current” being the significant word here), even a favourite motif might lose its appeal in time. Tinkerbell on a twenty year old’s calf is not quite the same on a sixty year old’s.

But it’s not just the ageing process that takes its toll. I might once have thought a bee would be a time-proof emblem for me. My name is Hebrew for bee, and I am such a busy person that friends buy me bee-themed presents without knowing the significance of my name. But had I plumped for a bee tattoo in my youth, I’d have been heading straight for the lasers once Sarah Ferguson adopted it for her coat of arms as part of her metamorphosis into the Duchess of York. (I reckon that’s why we see so few bees about these days – the supposed bee-killing virus is a myth, they’re just all keeping a low profile out of embarrassment.) I’m very fond of daisies, and my bathroom is strewn with them in various forms, but I’d soon change my tune should Kerry Katona bring out a “Daisy” perfume as part of her new, fresh, clean image. To avoid tattoo traps, you have to expect the unexpected.

But then in Tesco’s the other day (always a fruitful place for the summertime tattoo-spotter), I caught sight of a truly timeless tattoo. A swan-like pair of angels’ wings filled the bare flesh above a young mum’s white strapless vest. “These will see me out,” I can imagine her thinking in the tattoo parlour. “And I’ll be all set for heaven when I get there.” It’s got to be the ultimate fashion statement.

(This post was originally written for the Tetbury Advertiser’s May 2011 issue.)

Personal life

Spring Fever

Posted on March 1, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

It’s no wonder they call it Spring. All of a sudden things are springing up out of nowhere, as if someone’s put nature on fast forward without telling me.

How come I never noticed the snowdrops until they were in flower? They can’t have just appeared overnight fully formed. And did those daffodil shoots, now four inches high in my front garden, really pop up like a jack-in-the-box the minute my back was turned?

It’s not just flowers that have been miraculously materialising. When I took my daughter to her tap-dancing class yesterday afternoon, two sisters in her class had gained a baby brother since last week – and I hadn’t even noticed that their mother was pregnant. It’s bad enough that the weekly tap-dancing classes seem to take place every other day. To miss a whole human gestation period is beyond the pale.

At this rate, I had better make sure I get out and about in the next few days, or before I know it, the wild garlic and primroses will have come and gone. Those unlikely roadside bedfellows are my favourite sign of spring. I’d hate to miss my annual treat of driving down the country lanes with open windows, invigorated by the pungent spring air. And I can’t get by without seeing that gorgeous blue carpet that will be unrolling in local woodlands any day now. The delicate scent transports me back to the spring of my childhood, when no classroom was complete without a jamjar crammed with bluebells on every windowsill. It doesn’t make sense to me that in the days when we were all allowed to pick them to our hearts content, there was never any shortage of wild flowers.

Blink, and I’ll miss the violet haze of flax that briefly rests, gossamer-like, over too few fields round here. It’s such a welcome respite from the garish, choking rape that seems to take over the countryside for a few weeks each spring, like a horrible bully that wants everything its own way.

In no time at all I’ll be wondering whether I’m too late to admire the sumptuous pinks and mauves of the Arboretum’s rhododendrons. Nor do I want to miss the spindly-legged lambs skittering about fields that were once home only to sluggish, chubby sheep. All too soon they’ll have turned into sturdy teenage sheep waiting their turn to go to market.

The trouble is, when you live in an area like this all year round, it’s all too easy not to notice what tourists travel miles to see. If your chief shopping destination is the Coop rather than the Highgrove shop, and your shopping list is for groceries rather than rare antiques, you’re bound to have a different perspective on the local landscape.

So when are they going to mend all these potholes?

(This post originally appeared in the Tetbury Advertiser, March 2011)