I’ve been being domesticated again and clearing out my larder and going through my father’s belongings which I carefully boxed and put in there after he died more than twelve years ago now. I couldn’t face doing it before because I lost my parents within six weeks of each other and then life went onto the crazy side of interesting. And yet he isn’t lost, because his name was Peter and there’s a lot of him in Peter Cunningham just as there’s a lot of my mum in the redoubtable ladies of Windy Bay. They brought up three daughters to be themselves, whatever that was, and to know that they could change if they needed or wanted to, and we’re all ever so slightly on the strong willed side. Some may call us too stubborn for their good, but that’s because they don’t appreciate us properly. One of those people is my baby brother, who was not only unexpected, but benefitted from having 3 big sisters to keep an eye on him. Wasn't he lucky? And never forget that luck comes in two kinds.
Anyway, I’ve been looking at old photographs and diaries and trying to find out how I can get reels of old fashioned tape transferred to a medium where I can hear the recordings we made all those years ago when we were children and reading Winnie the Pooh with us all doing the voices and it’s been a bittersweet pleasure. I still miss them and I always shall but I can also see them more and more clearly in my children. The way that my son’s eyes have a wicked twinkle just before all hell’s about to let loose in a way that somehow you can’t blame him for is so like Dad, just as he is in looks. The way that my daughter goes outside and nibbles the soft fruit while she’s calling the cats is just like her grandmother. The cats themselves, because mum had a beloved black cat.
It also ties in with the Amy Hammond I’m in the research stage of because I always write the first draft and then do most of the research. Otherwise, I’m sad to say, I have a nasty tendency to get so caught up in the research that I don’t get the writing done. That’s led me to metal detectoring and some surprising facts behind what I’d always been sure was history and it’ll be out in the summer. Social history has always fascinated me, and I suppose a blog is the modern equivalent of the old diaries, but far more ephemeral because who knows what the future holds for technology? So I keep a diary for each year on my computer, then add photographs to it and get it printed and bound and someday, when I’m long gone, I like to think that I’ll live again for my children in my books and the details ofmy small, mostly contented life.
Right now, that life means accepting that the time for sitting outside and reading or sewing is gradually being replaced by snuggling up inside and cooking and thinking about Christmas and reading. Which brings me on to this week’s special offers, at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. They’re from two series’ which are just starting to merge into aspects of one complicated world.
First, there’s Amy Hammond, and on offer are A Handmade Crime, Aging Disgracefully and Two Graves. A Handmade Crime is fun because it brings Christmas to Swansmere in the hottest July for years because a TV series is being filmed there. In an earlier stage of my life, I wrote short stories for womens magazines and I always worked on Christmas short stories in July, and my family came to take Christmas music and TV programmes for granted then. If it was cool enough I’d do a Christmas dinner too. Oddly, outsiders never quite understood or appreciated it, any more than Amy does here!
Then there are three books from the Shadows Series which I write as Eleanor Neville. These are To be the best, Professional Hero and Enemy Within. The hero of the first book also appears in the other two and now ex-Navy Doctor Simon Jones has started popping up as the emergency medic in Amy and the new Lucy Williams books of which they are three in progress. He’s got a nasty case of imposter syndrome and a determination to be the best that can get him into a lot of trouble. I’ve no idea where he could have got those traits from, but I’m sure it couldn’t be me!
So have fun till we catch up on Sunday and please, let me know what you think of the current books. Today’s picture marks the changing season with a comfortable cat on a cushion. I don’t know about you but I sometimes wonder if I joined the wrong species!
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