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. 

Big day for Beezle (and me!)!

Big day for Mr. Beezle the grand old man and inspiration for #thedogray! ! We're signing at Waterstones in Salisbury in a few minutes! 12-2pm . Do come and visit us please!

Waterstones ts at 7-9 High Street, Salisbury, SP1 2NJ if you are lost or have never been. @watsalisbury if you twitter #thedogray for mentions!

Pixie was very upset not to be coming but will gently sulk in the garden at home...

Here is me reading from the book at the launch party a few weeks ago with Mr Beezle in attendance what a gentlemen! I may be persuaded to read today. We'll see.

See you there today?

hawks, toads and biscuits

Last week we had the launch of my new book The Dog, Ray. This is a very special book to me - I wrote it quite a few years ago and at the time no publisher wanted it except the Chinese and a publisher in Taiwan. This is, I believe, because they believe in re-incarnation. But Ray's time has come and Hot Key books have done her proud.

 Beezle did me proud too. The book is his really, he let me into the ways of dogs and was the inspiration for the story and he came to the launch and followed me up to the stage and lay at my feet the whole time I talked and read from the book. (That's me reading from the book - not Beezle though he could have done if he'd wanted to of course. I did ask him but he'd forgotten his glasses.) He's thirteen now which I think is about ninety one. Actually what he really needs is an ear trumpet. He can't even hear the sound of the chews box being opened, unlike Pixie who gallops over in a flash. What a star he was though. (and still is of course.)

We made masses of biscuits in his honour and have only just finished eating the ones that were left over. The book was published on October 1st and I suppose it's out there in the book shops but it's such a strange thing when you have a book published because you don't really know what happens to it. Will anyone review it? Will anyone like it? Will anyone read it? I'll be doing a book signing in the Salisbury Waterstones next Saturday 24th october between 12-2 so if anyone is around please come and say hello. (and buy the book if you can stretch to it)Beezle will be there too. We'll both be signing but not if Beezle forgets his pen.

 In my last post I mentioned not putting up a picture of a toad I'd found swimming in the dog's water bowl recently so here it is along with another toad who was sitting on the water metre when I came to read it.

As Beezle and Shakespeare would say " Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like toad, ugly and venomous, wears a precious jewel in his head."

If you didn't see the post before last I'm putting up the picture of the sea eagle again. As I'd said, in Ireland recently we had the good fortune to see a sea eagle in the wild - it was sitting in a tree overlooking a lake and it is only thanks to an amazing lens on a very small and basic pocket camera that we can see the details so well. To our naked eye it looked like a huge post sitting high up on a branch. They are huge.

Back in England we went to a steam fair and saw a display of eagles and hawks. This is a sea eagle too - they have a massive wing span. One of the hawks - a goss hawk - decided it would fly off for a while and soar in the thermals above the trees. Two wild red kites flew over head, watching the hawk, it was a wonderful sight. The hawks owner seemed unfazed but told us the reason he didn't fly golden eagles was because they were prone to picking up little dogs in the crowd. I'd like to have seen it pick Pixie up.

On a horticultural note the dahlias are still flowering well and these gorgeous gladioli called Plum Tart.

Hawk


Mary Oliver


This morning
the hawk
rose up
out of the meadow's browse

and swung over the lake -
it settled
on the small black dome
of a dead pine,

alert as an admiral,
its profile
distinguished with sideburns
the colour of smoke,

and I said: remember
this is not something
of the red fire, this is heaven's fistful

of death and destruction,
and the hawk hooked
one exquisite foot
onto a last twig

to look deeper
into the yellow reeds
along the edges of the water
and I said: remember

the tree, the cave,
the white lily of resurrection,
and that's when it simply lifted
its golden feet and floated

into the wind, belly-first,
and then it cruised along the lake -
all the time its eyes fastened
harder than love on some

unimportant rustling in the
yellow reeds - and then it
seemed to crouch high in the air, and then it
turned into a white blade, which fell.