Muse news and an amuse bouche

The muse for my book The dog, Ray and I are waiting.

Waiting for news on the next book. Beezle (who says when we were waiting for his book it was muse news) has asked me how long his shelf life (The dog, Ray)is likely to be. So many books are published each year I suspect it may not be long. Unlike the wait which I think was something like four years after it was published in China and Taiwan.
Sometimes my daughter reports that she's moved my book onto the "BEST SELLER" pile in whatever book shop she happens to be in. I don't know how long before they notice - maybe they don't. I tell her this is what hype is. So Beezle says he has hype hopes that his book will stay on the shelves for as long as he is able to lie on the sofa. I'm sorry about this - Beezle has taken to puns in later life.

The book we are awaiting news of is The Dark Horse. I have written about this in earlier posts. The next best thing to actually writing it is writing about it. I had a great meeting with my editor Emma at Hot Key Books the other week and it looks like they may make an offer before Christmas. But until they do you can never be too sure. An accountant may well turn it down in the end. Most publishers are market driven and it doesn't have either the words Games or Hunger in it. If they do accept it I'll be sure to let you know dear readers in the form of an extra Christmas blog post with holly and stuff like that thrown in.

 Meanwhile this is our own Dark Horse snacking on the verge - having a sort of amuse bouche and a very beautiful one I saw in Morocco - probably having more of a water biscuit.

 So whilst I am waiting, me and the muse and her long term companion Pixie the wolfhound, are taking lots of walks. It's very beautiful around where we live with acres of sky above our heads with no light pollution whatsoever and masses of trees.

 As the philosopher (and muse) Beezle and William Blake would say - "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way."

The rooks are still here - the babies - of which Cornelia should have been one -  have now grown and added themselves to the cloak of birds that swoop over the fields to rest up in those branches at night.

 I'll be sure to look out next spring for any other branchlings like my dear Connie (below) who -  those who are new to this blog  - sadly drowned.

I think that the book I'm writing after the one I'm writing now (sort of about foxes but I can't say too much as yet) will probably be about rooks or crows. A friend sent me a wonderful link to a book about a woman who lived in a wooden hut in the middle of the woods in Poland. I think she was a woman after my own heart. She had a lynx that she'd rescued that slept on her bed and a crow that used to steal things from the neighbouring village. Apparently it had a penchant for attacking girls on bicycles. One day, when an officer of the law came to the house with a summons, it flew down, picked the paper up and tore it into little pieces. The policeman shrugged his shoulders and the case (whatever it was) was dropped.

almost the last of the roses

The door

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there's
a tree, or a wood
a garden,
or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog's rummaging.
Maybe you'll see a face,
or an eye,
or the picture
of a picture.

Go and open the door
If there is a fog
it will clear.

Go and open the door.
Even if there's only
the darkness ticking,
even if there's only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there'll be
a draught

Miroslav Holub