Jamaica and another cup of tea

Map of Jamaica - 18th century

So . . . I am planning on finishing  The Pirate’s Boy by the end of January. I have less than a third to go and am looking forward to writing a great big ending with lots of heroism, dastardly deeds and general swashbucklery. Today I scuppered my pirate’s ship, which was sad but in retrospect had to be done. I also spent some time looking at flights to Kingston – I want to go. Hopefully I’ll be able to afford it to research the next one, if there is another one. It looks so beautiful. Today I wrote about 1500 words and decided to stop. At this rate a first draft by the end of Jan seems feasible. My daughter told me she wants to be a writer when she grows up, ‘so I can sit around and drink tea all day.’ Yea right.

My working day

Twitter

After much thought (well a little) decided to join twitter. Not sure if I’ll love or loath it – or use it as the perfect distraction instead of writing. So far feel a little overwhelmed. I’d love to hear any suggestions for people to follow. Already some of mine are giving me a headache. I’m http://twitter.com/#!/beatricecolin

I’m hoping to post The Three Kings short story on to my website. Until then, please drop me a line and I’ll send it to you.  I’m also thinking of turning my first two books into ebooks as they’re out of print and hard to get hold of. Not sure how to do it, though. I’m hoping to embrace all things digital and add new features to my next few books. All very exciting.

Hope 2011 is a wonderful year.

Bea x

Kings and Suffragettes

I’ve spent the last few weeks writing short fiction, which is a complete change of gear for me. The BBC commissioned me to write a story about the Census for March. For this I wrote a story about some Suffragettes in 1911. The Sunday Mail, a newspaper in Scotland, asked me for a festive story for their Boxing Day edition. I suggested a contemporary and a historical story and they went for the latter. And so after much panic – the kids were off school because of the snow – I wrote a story set in the Spanish Civil War around Christmas 1936. I will post it when it becomes available.

My other news is that I’m going to be working at the Tramway, an arts venue in Glasgow, from Jan, for one day a week on a really exciting new project. Will post more soon.

Happy Christmas!

Paris

It was raining when we arrived in Paris and it didn’t really stop for three days. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of romantic rain that makes great photos, giving everything a patent leather sheen, but full on torrential rain, that leaves bin-fulls of dead umbrellas in its wake and gets into your shoes.

I was in Paris to do some more research for my Spanish Civil war novel – most British people who volunteered for the International Brigade passed through Paris – so as well as walking on the left bank, we went to Belleville in the east of the City. It is now full of middle Eastern bakeries, Chinese restaurants and north African shops but in 1936, it was a poor workers district full of Russians, Jews and Greeks. It was once home to Edith Piaf and it was where that classic French film, The Red Balloon was made. We walked up the hill and found an incredible view right across the cit and for about half an hour it stopped raining. It was wonderful to discover a new area of Paris. Now I’d like to go back and spend longer there.

Although the weather meant that we couldn’t wander through the city for hours, it is almost impossible to have a bad time in Paris: long lunches with wine, hot chocolates in atmospheric old bars and several sojourns into galleries to look at modern art. But apart from the bakeries that sell cakes that look too good to eat and the beautiful people, it’s the smells of Paris that evoke so much, like the sweet metallic tang of the Metro and the bitter tang of freshly roasted coffee.

Sailing to Little Cumbrae

Little Cumbrae Foghorn

Looking towards Arran from the Lighthouse

In the name of research for my pirate book I went sailing last weekend with my good friends Andrew, Elsa and all our children, in the Firth of Clyde. Even though it is October, the sun shone, the sea was completely flat and we  managed to sail for about ten minutes before everyone declared that we were going too slowly and we decided to use the motor. It was wonderful to experience life on a boat, if only for a day. As well as seals and cormorants, we saw razor bills and oyster catchers. In the boat, I was amazed by the fact that everything was stowed away and only brought out when we needed it. Not sure if I’d ever be that tidy, organized or remember where I put things.

We sailed from Largs to Little Cumbrae which is now owned by an Indian Yoga Trust, then walked across the island, picking and eating late black berries, to the Robert Stevenson lighthouse. What material did I gather? Hard to quantify. As well as facts about boats – reefing and that ropes on a boat all have different names – I wanted to feel the lurch that stays with you for hours after as if your blood has been affected by the tides. That and the windfall apples from the lighthouse garden that I baked into a pie.

Writing, writing, writing

Spent the day at my desk again working on the first third of the novel. It felt like quite a slog; tea, write, tea, chocolate, write, tea, toast, write, the postman! only boring bills, and then I wrote a whole paragraph that I was happy with and it all seemed worth it. I’ve been asked to write a postcard about my favourite place to write by Arvon. I’d love to say somewhere really exotic – a log cabin looking over a sea loch or in Paris overlooking the rooftops. But the truth is that I write in the smallest room in the house which has door than I can close on the mess and the washing up and the laundry and am thrilled that I’ve graduated from writing on the landing (freezing) or in the kitchen (too many temptaions). I can’t work in cafe’s -  too noisy. Or libraries – too many distractions; why is that middle aged man reading a book on Elizabethan needlework etc? The only distractions here are the trains that pass by on their way to somewhere more beautiful, Loch Lomond or Helensburgh.

I have to say more words about Totleigh Barton. I didn’t mean to sound negative about the experience  – what a fabulous place and fascinating people – it’s just that a few people seemed to get sucked into the whole business side of publishing too early. But then we all have the same burning and unresolvable question. How can we find the time to write what we want and make enough to live on? I still can’t work it out. Try genre, a friend said, but I never read that stuff. Or TV? But I rarely watch it. It’s a big big deal to have the faith in yourself to spend hundreds of hours writing books that may never get published. A massive gamble with pretty poor odds. Arvon brings people together who all have the same dilemma. Hopefully it can send them back out into the world again with not only renewed confidence but the sense that they’re not the only ones.

Cream Teas and Mojitos all round

Just back from Devon, Totleigh Barton to be exact, a lovely old farmhouse in the depths of the lush countryside. I was there as a guest speaker at Arvon and, although I had a killer of a cold, had a really nice time talking about my own work and writing in general to a group of aspiring writers.

The one thing that I was asked by a number of people was how to do things, as if there was a map. One women said she had difficulty writing descriptions and admitted that she always skipped those bits in books. Well don’t write them then, I told her. Write the kind of things you like to read. Arvon is wonderful for inspiring people but it would be horrible if they thought that they were there to be trained, like a chef. I can’t remember exactly how I write. I just write stuff that I like and that I think works. You have to have a bit of a fuck-you attitude, I think, to writing. Stop reading books about writing, I felt like telling them. There are no rules (apart from grammar).

Out in paperback!!

On a more positive note, two paperbacks of The Songwriter arrived yesterday. And I also just heard that I have sold it and The Luminous Life to a Brazillian publisher! Fantástico.

Red Flags

1936 was the year my father was born. It was also the year that the King George V died and Edward, albeit briefly, replaced him  In Europe, Mussolini had forcibly taken over Ethiopia, Franco was gathering his forces in Spain, Stalin had sentenced some of his most high ranking officials to death and Hitler was well underway in his persecution of Jews and other undesireables in Germany. In Britain the divide between the rich and the poor, the north and the south was huge. Good, bad, wealth and poverty; all the lines seemed clearly drawn. It looks as if it was a time of high contrasts, of acts of meglomania or self-sacrifice. But how do you square the personal with the political, a challenge most of us have never had to face?  And at what cost? These are the questions I’m grappling with. More love and bombs, I suppose.

New website – new blog

I’ll be using this space to talk about the books I’m reading, the films I’m watching and the music I’m listening to in relation to the books I’m writing. I may, of course, go off topic with a rant about something entirely different. But hey, it might be fun.

I’m working on two novels at the moment, one set in 1936 in Edinburgh, Paris and Spain, and one for children set in 1750 in the Colonies and Scotland.

Right now I’m about to start reading Behind The Spanish Barricades by John Langdon-Davies.He was a journalist who was in Spain in 1936.

Joseph Night by James Robertson has also just arrived. It looks good although can’t say I’m crazy about the cover.

Lots of pics

Home safe at last. Take at look at Paul’s Flickr site to see some brilliant pics of our trip – www.flickr.com/photos/swordfishphotography/