Twitter ye not, Missus ( with apologies to the late great Frankie Howerd)

Well, I made it, sort of anyway, I am now on Facebook and Twitter.  Officially of course this is all for work but I have lovely photographs of my daughter and me in various gorgegous places from last year so that every time I turn on Facebook it makes me smile. I don't think I've quite got the hang of Twitter. It's like working down a mine, I can't see anything and am not quite sure where to go. I feel like just staying in bed and pulling up the duvet and saying, 'I can't do this.'
Have you read Sue Townsend's book, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year? I bought it for Katy for Christmas. I haven't read it yet but I take the sentiment to heart. Bed is the place for me. Some years ago I bought myself a large expensive bed and a large expensive mattress. When all else fails I do the Marian Keyes bit and have duvet days. The joys of working at home. I remember hearing about one guy who used to do his ironing naked while doing a radio show. You could be playing Angry Birds, I know I do. It knocks all the aggression out of me without involving anyone else.
Also I listen to Rebus.Does Bill Paterson have the sexiest voice on earth or is it just that I am a sucker for  his northern accent, having one myself though not nearly as attractive as his. Edinburgh ain't Durham. I think we speak here what they call low Scottish. Do other people notice these things?  Writers do of course, even the slightly deaf ones like me.
 When Katy was little we used to play a game when the adverts came on television. Whose voice is it?  I alter my voice all the time. Not necessarily consciously, I just pick up the cadences of other people's speech. I wish it meant I could speak other languages but it doesn't seem to work that way. Six years of french at school and I have about two dozen words.
When I go back to Tow Law, the pit town I grew up in, I'm indecipherable to the world beyond. In London I'm being professional and upgrade it a whole load. When I give talks I try to be their writer. I can be pet and love and ducks and even darling but not flower. I hate flower.
When I was a journalist at twenty I had a horrible boss and he had this awful sarcastic way of making me feel incompetent by referring to me over the telephone as flower. I wasn't the world's best journalist but I was not much older than a kid and could have done with a bit of encouragement. However, I did learn later that he left journalism and went off to run a post office and somehow that made me feel better, at least he wasn't bullying some other cub reporter.
I went off journalism, I hated the way it went round and round. My writing goes round and round too but since I have no idea how the process works I'm still fascinated and glad to be in the circle and glad now to to be in the facebook circle and the twitter - can you call it a circle?
Pigeons fly round and round. When I lived in Crook which isn't far away from here I used to go down to the river with my springer spaniel Timmy and walk him there and on sunny days the pigeons would be out of their crees and flying in circles in the sunlight white and silver. I love the sound of pigeons cooing and of gulls crying. It makes me think of my favourite places,  countryside and seaside. And pheasants up in Weardale where my family comes from, they make that lovely hoarse sound as they strut about the fields. the most incongruous or birds, they look like exotic visitors. I love birds so yes, I think I'm going to like Twitter if I ever get the hang of it.

Ghosts of Christmas

My sister came over to see me this Christmas and we got to reminiscing about what Christmases were like when we were small.  My sister wore my mother's swan ear rings as a way of holding her close on Christmas Day because our mother has been dead for twelve years.I always wonder,  given that we have money and warmth and time and other people, why we fiind Christmas so hard to enjoy and I think of all of us standing in queues in the supermarkets, determinedly cheerful - or in some cases not, as they fight over the last turkey in M&S and the overworked staff are obliged to hold back their frustrations.
Amongst the tinsel and the decorations we carry our memories and our unreal expectations of how perfect it could be.
Among the food and drink we hurry away to shed a few tears in private or find our best wine glasses shattered on the floor as though it were a slight cracking of some heart over all that we have lost, all that we wish Christmas to be. I think of the last Christmas I spent with my husband and I am always aware that I  cover it in glory and perfection and although it was wonderful in many ways one of our cats ran away on Christmas night and never came back and I can remember standing outside under the stars and crying over it.
The Christmas after my husband died I took my seven year old daughter to the pantomime as we did every year and had booked immediately after the one before.  I managed to go to the pantomime again this year with my favourite three year old but it was hard. I sat clenched throughout the whole first half and didn't understand the panic at first. How strange - they say that the mind forgets but the body never does.
One Christmas my daughter and I went to stay in a hotel in Pitlochry. There we were surrounded by a saga Christmas get away, old people with white hair and zimmer frames.  Then there was the one in Edinburgh where somebody set off the fire alarms smoking pot in their bedroom and we all ended up standing outside in Charlotte Square while the fire engines arrived, halfway through what should have been a lovely dinner.  Katy is a vegetarian and discovered that Scotland was not a good place for her to have Christmas. One waiter tried to confuse her by telling her that cock a leekie soup was full of vegetables, which it is of course and she was offered various pasties featuring cheese and broccoli
Then there was the year we went to York and she slept the day through and I spent an hour in the nearest Spar shop buying milk.
Once Christmas day is over, the ghost of Christmas present and his tawdry gifts is gone with a sigh of relief from many people and the ghost of Christmas to come slides in by the back door, hiding amidst the by now dusty cards, the discarded wrapping paper and the empty chocolate boxes and then beware because we have all indulged so we punish ourselves during January by dieting and not drinking and taking various awful forms of exercise so that we as well as the weather are miserable. We feel bad about the wine and the cake we hid behind while we endured yet another English Christmas.
I think of Dickens at Christmas and how he tried to rid himself of the poverty of his childhood, the betrayal of his parents, the weakness of his father, his spendthrift son and his many children who had to be supported under the horrors of his creaking marriage, writing and writing so that his life like our Christmases could be bettered by money and brandy butter.
Inside us all I think there is a Scrooge thinking, 'oh hell, not again', the sting of our empty bank balances staying with us as we bread and water our way into the rest of the winter. So spare a thought for us all, how hard we try, how brave we are. We are not really greedy and drunken and self seeking, we stumble through as best we can, blaming the awful television, the queues in Sainsburys and one another for the plain horror of the season. And somewhere inside we hold on to the idea that sooner or later we will be back to those perfect Christmases such as my sister and I had when we were small children, when the Salvation Army came on Christmas morning and played carols outside the door, we danced in the snow and my dad fixed lights all around the huge picture window in the lounge. We would run to the bottom of the garden and tell him each year that they were the best and always of course they were.

Private, Personal or Pushy?

I'm a very private person. Yes, right, we all think,  if she's so private what the hell is she doing here, putting herself in the forefront, needing publicity to sell her books. There isn't anything very private about being constantly available, about facebook, twitter and all the other social networks which I'm advised I should get in amongst if I want to sell books and of course I do want to be read. You don't write for yourself. Dylan Thomas used to say that if you do then nobody will want to intrude on such a private party. But part of me wants to run away, to my caravan in the dale and be gloriously unavailable. Alas, it won't do. I went to the library and got out a book which is called  Facebook and Twitter for Seniors for Dummies by Marsha Collier.
The librarian was most apologetic. But no, the poor lad could see that technologically I am good with wheelbarrows.  My writing friends have offered to help and I will try hard to fit in with today's world but it doesn't come naturally. Perhaps that's why I write historicals, I don't really want to be here.Am I hiding from the present and scared of the future?
The funny thing about it is that I am a natural show off, I love to get up in front of a huge audience and talk about my work and make people laugh but the thing I like best is the writing. All the rest is decoration. So in order to keep on doing the writing I must be publicity conscious and do the social networking which comes as naturally to me as things like ice skating and skiing, swimming and just about anything which needs physical co ordination. I don't seem to have mental co ordination either somehow for all this stuff which other people find easy and exciting.
There is a song which Bruce Springsteen wrote and sings, called Cover Me. It's my favourite song. It's the Marlon Brando idea that we are all selling something and the guy in the song just wants to run home and be warm and safe.
My safe place is a little garden room at the back of my house where I retreat in the evenings and go into the past that I have created. I call on my memories and my experiences and the things that I have learned, both painful and otherwise. I dredge them up and haul them into the limelight. I want people to read them, to enjoy them, to gain pleasure from them and to be able to take them with confidence into that safe place which we all need. Now I need to haul myself into the limelight too.
The contradiction is that writing has no safe place. That's what makes it so hard and that's why I do it. I surround myself with safety and then I write and the illusion spills away.

A Helluva Do!

The Romantic Novelists Association threw its annual winter party last night. I don't belong to the RNA any more. I did for a long while.  People come and go but good organisations go on without them. The RNA gave me so much - fun, friends, contacts, a place to be me as a writer, a haven from the stresses of my job and when I'm an old lady, as I hope to be in time, I will sit at home on winter nights and remember the lunches and the dinners and the people and the committees and how damned generous people within my industry can be.

(left to right, Elizabeth Gill, Trisha Ashley, Leah Fleming)

The party was held at the Mechanics Institute on Birdcage Walk. It's been at various places over the years, we disagree about which was the best. I liked Westminster College where the students used to cater for us and fill us full of gorgeous concoctions involving sweet pastry, strawberries and cream and I liked the ones at the New Cavendish Club especially the year where the weather was so bad that we couldn't go outside on to the rooftop. I can't remember now why it was so good, just that it was the best and we were all together.

June Tate and Lizzie Lamb

We used to have award ceremonies at the Cafe Royale and then at the Savoy. There is nothing like pulling up in a taxi at the Savoy for making you feel as if you're really having a good day.

London is always business for me. I wouldn't dream of going there for pleasure but that's just because every time I go there for work I have such a good time, I couldn't imagine how it might be better. For the last eighteen years I've been going up and down to King's Cross in good weather and bad. I hadn't been for some time before I went this week and it was no different. It's so reassuring to know that always there are such good organisations waiting for us and the Romantic Novelists Association is as it always has been, one of the best.

Catherine King and Norma CurtisMary de Laszlo with Leah

Diane Allen on the right has just had her first novel published. It's with Macmillan and it's called For the Sake of Her Family.



Norma's lovely shoes!!

Diane Allen - A Woman for All Time

Diane Allen comes from the Yorkshire Dales. Her family has lived and farmed there for generations. She is proud of her heritage and can trace her lineage back beyond Cromwellian times.

When I first met her, it must be fifteen years ago, she was working at Magna Books in Long Preston. She then took over, with her associate, Helen Bibby, the running of the company.

Magna is like no other publisher and it is because of Diane and Helen and their warmth, generosity and integrity that you would go a long way before you would find anyone who has not basked in the experience of the Magna fun. If you go anywhere within hitting distance of Long Preston you are immediately invited to coffee, to lunch, to dinner and to a walk around the works there. It smells of paper and its atmosphere is like sinking into a duvet.

Diane has a family, children and grandchildren and a husband who supports not only Blackpool but Darlington football teams, which says a lot about his generosity too.

Of late she has found a new outlet for her talents and this week is publishing her first novel. I always thought she would do so, every time you talk to  her she has wonderful tales to tell. She writes about her passions, the people and the land she loves.

Last weekend she launched her first book at a place called Taitlands, Stainforth which is just outside Settle. It's a Georgian mansion with another building which upstairs has a huge tea room and it was there at 3p.m. on Saturday that her friends and family gathered, to eat scones with cream and jam, drink huge pots of tea and listen to the music of the Moonbeams, a Yorkshire folk group.

Diane spoke about her book, signed copies at the back of the room and dispensed her own lovely brand of joy.

Diane, second left with Leah Fleming on the left, Julia Stagg next to Diane and Elizabeth Gill on the right. Leah Fleming is the author of The Captain's Daughter and her next book coming out on January 17th is The Girl Under the Olive Tree. Julia Stagg's latest book is The Parisian's Return. She is working on the next which is called  The French Postmistress. Elizabeth Gill's book, Miss Appleby's Academy is published on Valentine's Day.

The Next Big Thing

My writing friend Leah Fleming encouraged me to do this, Leah@leahfleming.co.uk to take part in a blog chain which authors pass on to one another to flag up their latest work. Her wonderful book, The Captain's Daughter was published this year to great acclaim. Her next book is The Girl Under the Olive Tree. 

What is the working title of your book?

It's finished and is coming out in February. Miss Appleby's Academy, published by Quercus Books.

Where did the idea come from?

Partly from Leah Fleming when I went to stay and she suggested that since I had been at school in New England many years ago I might write something about America and the North East of England .

What genre does your book fall under?

It's a saga, a historical novel set partly in New England and mostly here in the North.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I think Gywnneth Paltrow would make a lovely Miss Appleby, she's just about the right age!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

It's about a woman of forty who runs away when her family tries to marry her off to an older man, comes to a pit village in the North East and sets up a dame school.

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?

My agent is Judith Murdoch.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I don't do first drafts, I just go round and round and round like a dog trying to make a bed and somehow from the mess I get a book.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I don't know. It's different.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My love of the village where I was brought up, my interest in education and my firm feminist beliefs.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

I like dealing with big issues like failing relationships, how medicine has improved people's lives, addiction, obsession and class.

Next week  my friends, Sylvia Broady   http://sylviabroady.blogspot.co.uk  who writes for Hale  and Janet Warburton, whose latest novel is Joanna   www.janwarburton.blogspot.com  will be writing in the new slot on Tuesday. Look out for these.

Library visits

The joy of writing comes for me when I meet people and see that they read, not just my books but all kinds of books and when I do talks at libraries and other places it makes me feel so good. I did a talk at Hartlepool library last week. It's a wonderful building, open to the second storey ceiling and the librarians had put aside a lovely big room, decorated the tables with flowers, made tea and coffee and offered lemon or chocolate muffins. I love lemon muffins.
The first person to come in started chatting and she didn't realize I was the author and she said,
'I'm only here for the muffins.'  I didn't let her get away with it and referred to this in my talk which made her laugh.
The people who were there came and kissed me at the end and even the librarians did. I don't think I have such a lovely kissed afternoon. It meant everything to me.
My daughter was at home that morning and she said, wasn't I going to prepare and though I don't write anything down I sort of scoop up the day, the library, the people as they come in and the feeling that the librarians give me during the half hour or so before the talk. I went into the library while people gathered and just waffled about. All those books and the people sitting in little groups, that's what makes it.
I try to tell funny stories because it's important to me to make people laugh. My grandma used to do it with style, my sister can and so can my daughter. Making people feel good is just great.
I told them that one of my earliest memories was of a pony ride on the beach at Seaton Carew. The pony was called Twinkle.  I hadn't thought about this for years but somehow as I drove to Hartlepool it came back to me. I tell them I am their author, I belong to them. My stories are of them and of me and of the North East which I hold so dearly.
Writer Freda Lightfoot tells a story about how a Yorkshire man asked her ( I think this is how it goes ) about her parents and she said her mother was from Yorkshire and her father was from Lancashire and he looked at her pityingly and said, 'Eh, that were a shame.'
It's a nice story and illustrates how I feel about people who aren't born in the north-east. I suppose I should feel ashamed of it in a way but it categorizes me nicely because I think writers have to feel like that about the places they love. Peter Robinson in Richmond and the dales, Rankin in Edinburgh, Donna Leon in Venice, we love and nurture the places we call home. My books are about people coming home and in  my new book Miss  Emma Appleby comes back to the place where she was born, up on the moors where the wind howls freely and the snow falls sometimes even in July.