First and foremost, I’m sorry I whinged about our weather while America was having it so much worse. To anyone caught up in what it's no exaggeration to call devastations, I send my prayers, and the weak explanation that I wrote the blog entry that was published on Sunday before the storm really hit.
So today is Monday and it is still wet and windy and much colder than it has been here in Dorset, which again, means it's mild by a lot of people's standards and I do know how lucky I am. I drove down to the beach at Sandbanks yesterday and watched the slate grey sea hammering the shore and there are floods forecast at high tide at Harbourside. Tomorrow, the weather is set to be better but it’ll be coats and gloves and warm woolly socks when I go out. Which I will because I’m aching for a good long walk.
But I’ve been having fun at home because I’ve been researching the next Esther Graham book and learning more about traitors and falconry patrols trying to catch carrier pigeons carrying enemy messages and double agents and David Niven doing top secret work just across the Bay. (For younger readers, he’s one of my favourite actors, especially in one of my all time favourite films, Appointment With Venus, which also has Kenneth More in. So now obviously I have to watch it for your sake. Probably with tea and biscuits, because I make these sacrifices for you willingly.) It’s the little details of the research that make me smile, like the committee who were turning German agents into double agents being considered of such national importance that they had a bun with their tea at meetings. We wouldn’t think twice about that now, would we?
I’ve also been watching baking programmes and adding to my cookbook collection with one from ‘Britain’s Best Bakery.’ The programme is more than twelve years old but some things are timeless and there’s a bakery in Oldcastle that I’ll be visiting soon in my imagination as well as my long term ambition to be able to do what so many of my older characters would call good plain cooking as well as a traditional pub or cake shop can. I think this sort of food is much underestimated, especially when made with good local ingredients. I’m so grateful that my family support me in this goal, and don’t laugh about any of my hobbies and passions where I can catch them. Or at least not all that often.
Going back to Esther for a few minutes, it’s strange how worlds change without you noticing it. On Thursday, the next Windy Bay book, Above the Sea and Below the Sky will be out and its heroine Eleanor found that her world changed drastically due to Covid, just as mine did. I'm into what I think of quilting season here now, so I can snuggle under whichever quilt I’m making and I’ve used some of this indoors day to mark the next one I fancy quilting. I fancied a change from crazy ones so it's a double nine patch with embroidered snowflakes on and I made it the last summer before Covid. While I marked it, I remembered a very different season of my life when we explored places without considering crowds and contagion and I was still dreaming of writing, and couldn't have imagined having the success that you, my lovely readers, are giving me now.
And you know what? I was happy then and I’m just as happy now in a very different kind of way. What’s more, I plan to carry on being as happy I can be come what may. I shall enjoy the small pleasures of life, whatever we may be, and when we catch up on Sunday I’ll tell you about the trip I’ve got planned this week to a new bakery that’s opened just opposite the park. It’s front is totally open so it’s safe enough for me, and I’m ridiculously excited!
Which takes us on to this week’s special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US.
There are two that I’ve written as my alter ego, Eleanor Neville. She’s not as nice as I am, but there’s still no overt violence or sex. The Omega Problem is the story of 3 unlikely superheroes who didn’t want to be heroes of any sort and were only united in having had a rotten Christmas until… well, you’ll have to read it to find out, won’t you? Then there’s Twice Shy which is a vaguely gothic love story, set in a cold grey winter on a cold grey beach and with a heroine who’s doing her best to cut herself off from the whole world. I get days like that sometimes, but again, nothing like as drastically as she does.
And if those are too gloomy for you, then there’s Picking up the Pieces, which is the first in Tia Brown’s Harbourside Series and set in a gorgeous summer of the sort my friends on the other side of the world are just beginning. Last but not least is ‘A Christmas Sampler’ which is Christmas short stories from all my series. There’s another one of those coming out next month, and oh, Dear Lord, where has this year gone?
Have as much fun as you can till we meet again, and today’s picture is a nice autumn-y one with mushrooms because I enjoy watching the seasons change.
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