Have just taken Jackdaw E Books' first phone call from a pukka bookshop: I totally fluffed it because they enquired if we were North Pennine Publishing. However, the order is processed and packed with our brochure, business card and invoice inside it.

Roll on November, NANOWRIMO and all associated bookery.

Jackdaw E Books

DRAGON BAIT - free this weekend

Dragon Bait

Get this book free - 27th and 28th October 2012 - free e-book promotion

This one's got humour and horses that fly.

Princess Andra volunteers to act as bait for the dragon ravaging her father’s lands, on condition that she is released from an arrangement to marry a foreign prince.

Unfortunately the Knight Rescuer who turns up is not the trusty old retainer she expects, but an unknown conservationist who wants the dragon, not the lady. After that very little goes according to plan.

GENRE: Comic fantasy
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What's in a Mane?

This is one for native pony fans, and particularly those who like the Fell pony in all its currently Very Hairy glory.

Recently a friend posted a pic of a Fell mare, Linnel Pearl, who was champion ridden Native pony in 1936 at Islington - with no spare hair showing. (Nice photography, by the way - square on to the mare, and one step to the rear, which is far more flattering and representative than the modern habit of taking The Head On shot to get rider and horse faces together, and thus making feet and body appear tiny by comparison.)

Notice also that she had a star and white markings on both hind heels.

Anyway, here's the 1936 photograph, of Linnel Pearl trimmed-up for the show:

People who viewed it were surprised at how "thoroughbred" the pony looked in the trimmed state, and thought she looked quite different from a modern Fell pony. So I Photoshopped in the feather and mane and tail she might have had before trimming:

What do you think of her now?

They're not fit let out on their own

Visitors staying in the converted barn are mostly delightful, but...

I have to say I worry about the common sense of some of our guests. We stipulate that the accommodation is non smoking; so most of our visitors don't smoke. If they do, they tend to smoke outside, so I put out a bucket they can use for their cigarette ends. Given our rainy climate the bucket usually has water in it. The trouble is, this seems to then extend their use to the dog's water bucket and the horse's water trough as extinguishing places. I can't believe that liquid nicotine and ash can be good for either of them. Today there is plastic picnic cutlery in the dog's bucket, too.

I have put up two notices on the stable doors that say "Please do not feed the horses." There are various reasons. One is that I've got greedy Fell ponies who are curious and will take something offered by hand which they would refuse if they met it in a bucket. They will very quickly learn that strangers offer food, and strangers' hands then become a target. I hate pushy horses who are constantly bullying for treats. Another and stronger reason is that when we have small children staying - and we frequently do - a greedy, nippy horse taught by the ignorant "feeders" would be dangerous to innocent patting, stroking hands. Yet another reason is that we had a group of smokers last year (ciggy butts in every bucket and trough) and I think they must have given one of the ponies tobacco to eat. That weekend Mr T had "the runs" something horrible for 24 hours, despite no change of diet. Townies just have no idea what is sensible to feed to a horse or how or when to feed it. And no consciousness of the dangers of their own ignorance.

This morning on mucking out I've found a paper plate in the stable. What part of "Do not feed the horses" don't they understand?

Review: THE GILDED LILY by Deborah Swift

The Gilded Lily by Deborah Swift

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I hadn't read the preceding novel by Deborah Swift so I came to this with an open mind. It's well and cleanly written with a good understanding of what both London and Westmorland must have been like in the 17th C. The dynamic between the two sisters keeps everything flowing along. I have to say I was rooting all along for Sadie, with her blemished face and gentle, skilful nature. I was relieved that after being locked in a rented room for several days she was able to escape (and this may be a crass thought - but I wondered about the sanitary arrangements :) ) Despite all the jeopardy that Ella's bull-headed, impulsive behaviour brings, it does give the plot its central power and also its resolution. Mind you a lot of the time I wanted to give her a resounding slap for her selfishness. I wanted to like her and couldn't, and that's really the only reason why I haven't given THE GILDED LILY five stars. It's a fine read and towards the end is a real page turner.


England, 1660. Ella Appleby believes she is destined for better things than slaving as a housemaid and dodging the blows of her drunken father. When her employer dies suddenly, she seizes her chance--taking his valuables and fleeing the countryside with her sister for the golden prospects of London. But London may not be the promised land she expects. Work is hard to find, until Ella takes up with a dashing and dubious gentleman with ties to the London underworld. Meanwhile, her old employer's twin brother is in hot pursuit of the sisters.

Set in a London of atmospheric coffee houses, gilded mansions, and shady pawnshops hidden from rich men’s view, Deborah Swift's The Gilded Lily is a dazzling novel of historical adventure. (less)
Paperback, 336 pages
Expected publication: November 27th 2012 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published September 13th 2012)
ISBN
1250001900 (ISBN13: 9781250001900)


View all my reviews

Review - The Sun's Companion - Kathleen Jones

The Sun's Companion by Kathleen Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is my kind of book - clear, understated, chronological, full of little details that bring the immediate pre World War 2 era to life. Anna's and Tamar's lives are given alternate attention so that the gradual unfolding of the story retains my interest. Although they enter the book as barely-teenagers and are shown as relatively powerless in their society/families due to youth and being girls, neither of them is a cypher and they each have distinct characters and ambitions.

In many ways this novel is about the shadows that lie beneath each character's story. Tamar is never quite sure whether she is Sadie's legitimate daughter or not; Anna takes years to recover from her childhood rape in Germany. Kathleen made me deeply sympathetic towards both of them as they journey into the war years and womanhood. The people they meet, love and hate are all solidly realised and have their own motivations. Anna and Tamar are not high minded fantasy heroines, but real and believable people who cope in realistic ways with the necessities of wartime life.

I shall look forward to reading the sequel.



View all my reviews



Kindle Edition, 439 pages
Published September 8th 2012 by The Book Mill
It's 1935. Tamar Fell has no family - or so she's been told - and she relies on the friends she makes as she's dragged from lodging house to lodging house by her mother - the reckless, beautiful Sadie. Then Tamar meets Anna Weissmann, exiled from her own family by European politics, and they forge a friendship that will last through bereavement, failed love affairs, internment, betrayal, and the dislocations of war.

An absence of dragons

Blissful, that’s what it is.

After six months of rain, cloud, wind and mud that even an Englishwoman couldn’t call Summer, we have our third day in a row of sparkling October sun. I’ve opened the windows and changed the bed, and the sheets are actually washed and out on the line and not drooping round the house.

I like working from home. There are drawbacks of course. One of them is a tendency to eat breakfast at the computer while I catch up on Facebook, or check that the writing forum hasn’t gone berserk. I do this mainly to postpone reading the e-mails that have come in overnight.

The wet, miserable summer has meant I’ve done far more writing than normal. I’ve polished three books this year – copy edited, proofed, typeset, be-Kindled, covers designed and uploaded to print on demand, and ten of each delivered last week as potential giveaways and samples. I’ve built myself another web site and got my tax return in early. I’ve registered for an American Employee Identification Number and filled in forms to stop Uncle Sam withholding 30% from my earnings over there.

On Friday I enveloped my sales brochures, trade terms and promotional blurbs for bookshops and broadcasters. On Saturday I posted them.

Now I feel like a mother whose children have been miraculously swept away to their grandparents. It’s a curious sensation, to have nothing driving me. The crystalline beauty of crocuses and colchicums isn’t urging me to poetry. My ambitious young coachman isn’t fighting off women, my grumpy old bat isn’t cuffing her grandson for misbehaving, my princess isn’t flying a mission across country on a dragon. I’ve stopped to brush up the crumbs of cereal from under the desk. The house in my head is empty.

I suppose this is what’s called peace.

I know it won’t last. The advertising will kick in and people will start asking for interviews and talks and books (with any luck) will start selling. I want to do NANOWRIMO, and I’ve only got three weeks to get a plot sorted out, but whether I do or not, I will certainly gather up some rejected story and start re-building it.

Only not today. Today I’m going to submit to peace. I’m learning a Welsh tune for the harp, and my head needs to hold nothing more. A lost battle, remembered by a lament a thousand years old.