larkin an barkin

I couldn't resist posting this drawing my daughter Chloe did (she'll tell you it's not finished)

of a wolf. I can feel another story coming ...............................

I have just returned from Hull where my book The Dog, Ray won the Hull Children's Literary award. I've never won an award and I was so shocked when they announced it that I couldn't think what to say. I had spent ages on my one hour "visit to schools talk" and my ten minute final "vote for this book" speech but not even contemplated an acceptance speech. All I could say was  it was like winning an Oscar!

Now I can understand why those people on X Factor burst into tears when they learn they've been chosen.

I think I won an ostrich egg for an art prize when I was about nine years. Fortunately it never hatched but I think it was a very old egg.

The first writing competition I ever entered was at about the same age and the prize was a pony!!! Yes - how irresponsible of the newspaper (I think it was the Daily Express) This is how ponies get to live in high rise flats. I'd always wanted a pony and thought this would be my chance. I didn't win. (I think to my parents relief)There must be a law against offering animals as prizes.

The Hull Children's book Award was an amazingly well run event and the best thing was that only children could vote. Yay! I think only children should vote for whether we stay or leave the E.U. I'm sure,given the facts, they'd have a clear and sensible view.
 Anyway I loved being in Hull and meeting the other authors shortlisted with me (we were five - and they are all fantastic writers which is why I hadn't prepared that speech.) They were David Solomons, Amanda Mitchison, Sally Nicholls and Joanna Nadin.

Hull is where the poet Philip Larkin lived for a long time, he was the librarian at Hull University and when you get off the train there is a statue of him. Hull is a city on the edge of things to quote some travel writer. The old part is so intriguing and atmospheric and I visited two museums one formally known as The Whaling Museum (here I'd like to add an RIP to The Artist formally known as Prince). The other on the slave trade. I feel a book coming .......

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The dog book of course was inspired by living with Beezle who unfortunately could not attend the awards though he told me he would be wearing his lucky socks. He was tired by all the excitement when I came home with my trophy and he reminded me that as he and Mark Twain would say "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

I came home to a clarion call from this thrush who was sitting in the porch. Now I know he didn't fly in through the cat flap ... hello Pocket? Nancy?  But fortunately he lived to tell the tale (though not to me) I feel another book coming ..........

Pocket (quarter Bengal) denied all knowledge of it.

In my absence the tulips are opening - here is Flaming Parrot - a gorgeous confection of frills and colour.

And I also couldn't resist putting this picture up as I'm working on my fox book. He does not belong to me but was rescued by one of the fox rescue people. He, like Beezle, is inspiring the writing.

Because Philip Larkin was a librarian -  here is my opportunity to thank the librarians in Hull who are doing such a fantastic job of keeping our libraries open.

This is my favourite Larkin poem (apart from they F you up your mum and Dad). I've posted it before but I doubt anyone would bother to trail back through all those blog posts.}

At Grass by Philip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

hooray ray

It's The Dog, Ray in the news again. 

 Firstly, here is a beautiful drawing of the inspiration for the book, the handsome Beezle, by Durer (my computer can't do the dots above the u} er - by my daughter Chloe. (my computer can't do the dots above the e }And here .......

 is the new beautiful cover for the book to be published in America by Candlewick Press in the Autumn.
Hooray!

 So here at Dog HQ we are very excited and Beezle is jumping for joy. He has been the subject of a 400 word document on being the inspiration for the book to be used in USA publicity. He says he'd like Tom Hiddleston to play him in the film.

 though Pixie can't see what all the fuss is about.

 It's that time of year again - the rooks building their nests. Two weeks ago there were only 6 nests in the rookery and now there are 40. Some of them have built semi-detached nests and they sit there proudly looking as if they are awaiting inspection. One or two of the nests look like something off Grand Designs. The trees are all linked together overhanging the drove and  when you walk underneath them (there's no where else you can walk but underneath) you get rained upon by little twigs. I left Harry the horse's feathers in the field behind them and pleased to see that most of them have gone and must now be lining the more exclusive nests - probably the ones in the gated community in the next door tree which is set slightly apart from the others.

 I'm on a bird theme now. My naughty ducks broke into the polytunnel and ate all my sweet peas that I'd just planted out. I'd been growing them since November and they were looking so good. Gardening can have its heartaches.

At least the shooting of the pheasants have stopped for the season. As Beezle and P.G.Wodehouse would say "The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or the wrong end of the gun."

I wanted to give this sad Thomas Hardy poem (below) ( thank you Jill )to the new gamekeeper but I think it would be an oxymoron.

 
Happy Easter dear Readers of this blog.

The Puzzled Game-Birds

They are not those who used to feed us 

When we were young—they cannot be - 

These shapes that now bereave and bleed us? 

They are not those who used to feed us, - 

For would they not fair terms concede us? 

- If hearts can house such treachery 

They are not those who used to feed us 

When we were young—they cannot be!

Thomas Hardy.

wolf moon

I awoke last night to hear the sound of some creature being dragged up the stairs. This is always accompanied by a low cat growling, announcing the trophy.

Pocket (quarter Bengal) was dreaming at the bottom of the bed, and I was hoping, at the top of the bed, that I was dreaming too.. It was obviously not a small animal. I imagined a large rabbit or a small deer. Nancy (the hunter) likes to wail as well which is then followed by the slow crunching of bones. In the morning I have to tiptoe around various organs left on the landing. This time I wasn't sure what animal it was.

 Beezel and I are very proud to announce here at Dog HQ  that our book The Dog, Ray has been shortlisted for the Hull Library Book Award. He wanted me to photograph him in a domineering pose over his symbol for my other book The Boy with the Tiger's Heart. This is vey exciting. They will announce the results in April and I (but sadly not Beezel) have been invited up for the awards. He said he'll have to teach me how to have that Oscar "oh I'm so glad I didn't win" look when they say who the winner is.

I thought I'd share the first sign of Spring. When I opened the lid to read the water meter there was this mother toad and her baby! (the small brown thing} She moved over and put a protective arm around it which I didn't photograph because it just looked like a pile of pebbles.

 All waiting is over now and things sorted which is great. As Beezel and Charles Reade(1814-1884)
said, giving advice on writing novels,  " make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait." I am now half way through an exciting story involving a fox. You'll all have to wait.

 Because Pixie is a wolfhound she is particularly effected by the Wolf Moon. I'm a little late in reporting this as the Wolf Moon is in January. But I love the names given to the full moons. They are, incase you don't know them -  and going through the months starting with January
Wolf Moon -Snow Moon -Worm Moon -Pink Moon -Flower Moon - Strawberry Moon -Buck Moon - Sturgeon Moon - Harvest Moon - Hunter's Moon - Beaver Moon - Cold Moon.

 One of the ducks ambled in thinking it was a Worm Moon but disappointed and a little miffed to see it was just a washing machine - not even reconciled with the fact he could see lots of other ducks in it when he looked at his reflection.

Wolf Moon

by Mary Oliver



Now is the season
of hungry mice,
cold rabbits,
lean owls
hunkering with their lamp-eyes
in the leafless lanes
in the needled dark;
now is the season
when the kittle fox
comes to town
in the blue valley
of early morning;
now is the season
of iron rivers,
bloody crossings,
flaring winds,
birds frozen
in their tents of weeds,
their music spent
and blown like smoke
to the stone of the sky;
now is the season
of the hunter Death;
with his belt of knives,
his black snowshoes,
he means to cleanse
the earth of fat;
his grey shadows
are out and running - under
the moon, the pines,
down snow-filled trails they carry
the red whips of their music,
their footfalls quick as hammers,
from cabin to cabin,
from bed to bed,
from dreamer to dreamer.

Planet earth is blue

RIP David Bowie.

Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do - but WAIT. 

For anyone who might have read the last post and were waiting for the Christmas greetings which I said I'd send if I had news from my publishers - well - obviously I didn't have news. And I still don't have news. However I will send a Christmas picture of Sam - our cousin's dog who came to visit.

 He was embarrassed by his costume and Pixie spent a lot of time giggling with Beezle

 So I am looking at waiting yet again. I know that all things come to him who waits - as long as you know what it is you are waiting for and don't miss it when it does arrive. (news from my  publishers)
I know that knowing how to wait is the great success of life. I've never really liked that word successful. It's the opposite end of the scale to failure - neither words I like or their connotations.
If you wait, all that happens is you get older.

 Here is Pixie waiting for supper.

 Here is me waiting for my cold to go.

As Beezle and T.S.Eliot would say "The faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."

 I'm waiting for these tulips to flower

 I'm waiting for this particularly beautiful rose to open its petals.

The ducks are waiting to come out

I'm waiting for the sweet pea seeds to germinate and grow into these

and here is Harry waiting for someone to ride him.


And sure enough - as William Faulkner said - even waiting will end - if you can just wait long enough.

Waiting

The song I came to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing
and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true,
the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony
of wishing in my heart…..

I have not seen his face,
nor have I listened to his voice;
only I have heard his gentle footsteps
from the road before my house…..

But the lamp has not been lit
and I cannot ask him into my house;
I live in the hope of meeting with him;
but this meeting is not yet.

Rabindranath Tagore 

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

Writer's Block

I guess it's that time of year where you might find yourself ordering things off the internet for Christmas to delay the moment when you know you have "writer's block." 

It's interesting how much time you can waste doing this instead of writing about the weather or putting "suddenly" at the beginning of each new paragraph. The last item I bought (OK it was an advent calendar} wouldn't register until I'd put instructions for delivery. After I sent it I realised instead of writing "Please leave it in the porch" "I'd written Please leave it in the pooch."

The pooch Pixie.

This was not a good thing. For indeed the pooch Pixie has already consumed items left in the porch. Probably her favourite one was Nigel Slater's book on food. It was wrapped up as well. But then Pixie, like her forebear Jai, likes anything to do with food. Jai ate the back of the sofa so she could lie behind it with her head on where the back had been and watch "Ready Steady Cook." on the t.v.

I am reminded of this because I have been re-reading some of my earlier blogs from a few years back. This is another sign of writer's block. Spending time reading what you have already written rather than what you should be writing now. I found myself yesterday re-reading the manuscript that is with my editor waiting to be approved or disapproved. I have read this so many times I can practically recite the whole thing by heart. It begins - "Suddenly ........."

 Another tactic is to do something else completely different. I have been planting sweet pea seeds for next year.

The worry about leaving it in the pooch is that the other day there was nearly a nasty pooch in a pooch drama. I never write about the people who come and stay in the Pink Tower as holiday guests but a lovely couple came with two tiny dogs which were so tiny they managed to get under the gate and into our garden. Pixie firstly didn't know what they were(I know the breed but can't spell it right now) and secondly didn't want two things she didn't know in her garden. Each dog was smaller than her head and as she may well follow the maxim "don't eat anything bigger than your head" I feared she was going to consume them. She barked a lot and they barked a bit and managed to wriggle back under the gate. My heart was in my mouth which was better than a dog being in hers.

 Something else you do with writer's block is to leave the house. There is a great natural history section in Bristol Museum where this wild cat is in a glass case.

 I showed the picture to Pocket (quarter Bengal) and asked him if he intended to grow this big but he was busy doing my paperwork and thought my question was silly. He reminded me I couldn't put cat food down as a legitimate expense. I told him I was writing about a cat in my new book (the one with my editor).

 The last of the dahlias (my favourite - Cafe au Lait} and the answer to writer's block - get in a cart and ride away into the sunset. Beezle has reminded me that he and Nietsche think that 'the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself, you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.'
I am avoiding both things - forests and caverns that is.

I suppose every writer suffers from it do they? Ted Hughes had the wonderful Thought Fox who inspired him. Reading his poems it's hard to believe he could ever have been stuck in a rut and I'm sure he didn't waste time ordering driving gloves over the internet. Actually I don't think there was an internet then.


Stern

in memory of Ted Hughes by Seamus Heaney


"And what was it like," I asked him,
"Meeting Eliot?"
                      "When he looked at you,"
He said, "it was like standing on a quay
Watching the prow of the Queen Mary
come towards you, very slowly."

                       Now it seems
I'm standing on a pierhead watching him
All the while watching me as he rows out
And a wooden end-stopped stern
Labours and shimmers and dips,
Making no real headway.

writing is only a substitute for living

Writing is only a substitute for living - so says Florence Nightingale. I thought Florence was busy being a nurse but perhaps like a lot of people she had an unfinished novel in her bottom drawer and therefor knows what she's talking about.

Perhaps she is right. As a writer I think you should write every day - even if it's just thoughts or a shopping list and maybe one is so busy writing you're not getting out there nursing or doing other 'living' things. And also as a writer you must always read as well. As you can see from the picture below I am doing a lot of reading.

Actually this is Beezle and me doing that book signing in Waterstones - not my own personal library. It was a lot of fun - particularly when other dogs came into the shop. A friend of mine thought I'd do better if I changed the title of the Dog Ray to Fifty Shades of Ray. I think he made a good point.

One of Henry Miller's tips to writers is to keep human. See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. I think this sounds good. As Beezle and Ray Bradbury would say " Writing is not a serious business. It's a joy and a celebration. You should have fun with it."

 Here are the dogs having fun down the yurt. I'm there too - busy writing in a corner. Oh no - a yurt doesn't have corners. Oh well - writing in the round.

Suddenly, I looked up what other famous people (by other I mean Florence not me) say about writing. Elmore Leonard says never start a book with the weather. Uh oh! The opening line to The Boy with the Tiger's Heart  is
"The snow falls heavily that night and in the morning lies in deep drifts ..........."

Still at least I didn't write "It was a dark and stormy night."

He also said never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

Someone else said if you'd don't know what to write next and the story is on the verge of being boring bring in a man with a gun.

Susan Sontag suggests that you know everything about adjectives and punctuation and make a list of words to thicken your active vocabulary. I like this. I've always thought if I was ever asked onto Desert Island discs the book I would take would be a dictionary. It would work like this:
To have puny, not just little, hoax not just trick, mortifying not just embarrassing, bogus not just fake. I could make a story out of puny,hoax,mortifying,bogus. They are a story.

Here is Pocket (quarter Bengal). Dreaming, he says, is the only real substitute to living.

I was suddenly reading Sylvia Plath the other day(I'm suddenly name dropping here) and she said that her desire to write came from a tendency towards introversion, begun when she was in the fairy tale world of Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins. I can relate to that. As a writer, I've often thought of myself as a cross between Cormack Mc Carthy and Enid Blyton.

Oh look - a man with a gun has just arrived at the door.