Too hot to think

Not designed for tropical weather, which is one reason I live in the north east of Scotland. Therefore I feel slightly hard done by when the weather is glorious, though this time we've been cold and damp for so long I admit even I took some delight in the hot sunshine! And though everything is so far behind the allotments are mostly planted and the seedlings, which were threatening to take over, are finally off the kitchen windowsill and out fending for themselves. The tadpoles appear to be luring snails into their new pond with all the aplomb of Cornish wreckers, so they're fine. The worms seem to have given up the ghost in the cold snap but have been partially replaced - might have to get some more. The next novel is 80% typed and 70% proof read, but the cover is still in embryo - teaching has now stopped for the summer (yippee!!) so there are a few days a week when I have, in theory, a little time to type (as well as rewriting stuff for next term and catching up on exciting things like, oh, housework).
I've taken on some work where I have four long country bus journeys a week, a great opportunity for bird watching, as it happens. Though I'm often travel-sick on buses, the speed of the drivers on this route encourages me to think I'll be dead in a ditch before I get the chance to feel nauseous, which is always encouraging!

A lovely day

Thanks, everyone - I've made it to 78 in the top 100 of Amazon's historical fiction! My word.

And the bus arrived at the bus stop just as I did - maybe it's going to be a good day!

Am I a proper writer now?

Flicking through my Amazon dashboard, I find I have sold my first three books in Italy. Does this make me a proper international author?! And if so, what's wrong with France, Germany and Spain?

Spring definitely here!

What a rash thing to say. But the seed potatoes have arrived and I now have to divvy them up and distribute them around our compost bins - which are used as storage on our little plots - for the various other plotters who've ordered them. Another plotter is, I hope, doing onion sets.

Two excellent weekends, one down in Edinburgh again partly dog-walking, partly visiting the newly-refurbished museum in Chambers Street. This time I brought home a litre lemonade bottle full of D's good mixed berry wine (I've finally bottled my over-active coffee and elderflower wines, and took them a bottle of the coffee), two large handfuls of potent wild garlic and half of a large and elderly bracket fungus, found on the ground in an almost fossilised condition. Absolutely no research achieved, but the wild garlic pesto is brilliant. The next weekend in glorious sunshine I dug over Allotment Minor and spent most of the rest of the day helping to plant a variety of community fruit trees in our local park - apples, plums, cherries and amelanchier. May they thrive! The weekend also involved a ceilidh including the lethal helicopter dance, but as far as I know no ambulances were required this time ...

Yesterday I took my students for a walk to see a couple of things round the university - they were so excited! Ten minutes fresh air and that has made their lecture. Anything to break the monotony, clearly. Today I sang to one of my classes - this was perhaps a step too far.

Ah, well, meetings and visitors this week, lots of preparation and minutes and reports and things, not to mention the teaching (now halfway through, hoorah, and the last week of term, hoorah, hoorah!), but maybe next week in amongst the seed potatoes I'll get down to some typing. Working title at present: An Abandoned Woman (or The Abandoned Woman? Definite or indefinite? Decisions, decisions.

Fizzing head

I can feel when the time is coming near to write something new. My blood seems to fizz, to sparkle, slowly at first, like a pot put on to boil, my head too starts to spin, to fill up, and shadows of stories flit past me, completely unrecognisable but completely thrilling. If I'm unlucky, it builds up and builds up and I just finish in a week with a headache, a night of strange dreams, a fit of depression and nothing whatever to show for it. But if I'm lucky, and focussed, and have the time to channel it at the right moment, into a new idea or into the development of something already thought of, then it can mean a week of excitement, scribbling at every opportunity, a breathless rush, and a new plot or a new episode or a new person is there, alive on the page, almost illegible in places with the sheer speed of writing but the best, the best feeling in your head that you can ever have.

Broad beans planted in the kitchen. Five percent of the next novel (whatever it's going to be called) typed. Allotments calling to me, seed potatoes ordered or chitting. Currants badly needing pruning, raspberries too. But a lecture to do in an hour ...

Print on Demand!

A damp day after a few days of virtually June-like, shirt sleeves weather, but finally Death in a Scarlet Gown can be printed on demand! It's available from Amazon.com, not .co.uk, which seems a bit strange from my perspective but works for Amazon. Sales of the e-books continue to rise, thanks everyone! and thanks for the kind reviews for Death in a Scarlet Gown.

I've finished reading the next book - its original title was An Unkenspeckle Woman but someone has said in no uncertain terms that no-one's going to understand that! It's the Scots word for inconspicuous, not well known, and I rather like it. However, the title is now under debate. 'An Inconspicuous Woman' seems odd, somehow. The story is set in Fife, mostly around Letho, the village where Murray has his country home: there's a hot summer, an unwelcome visitor, a charming stranger, a swimming accident, a quarrel over a manse, some reflection on young women who fall from grace, and an architectural disaster - and of course a murder. Now to type it up.

But then there's teaching to do. I've just submitted my exam papers for the external examiner to examine (what they're best at), and have just been reminded that they need resit papers as well. Oh, blow. I struggled a bit to write them in the first place, and then lost a memory stick with the first version of one of them. However, I suspect that second time round won't be as bad now I have a good idea what I'm doing. And after all, I have - oh, five days? - to do them, along with a lengthy meeting tomorrow out of town, two more meetings on Sunday, and two days' teaching and a hospital appointment in between - no problem! Who needs sleep? (well, I do, and probably more than average!).

So having said that, I'd better get on!

Swamped.

I'm in a borrowed office on a borrowed PC as my poor overworked laptop was declared dead yesterday after hopes that a new hard drive would be the answer. I now have a new (old) laptop but as yet can't attach it to the internet, so I'm feeling somewhat frustrated (and I don't even think I use the internet that much!). I've acquired another class to teach, following the unplanned descent of the stairs by a colleague (believe me, I wasnae there, I didnae do it), and haven't finished writing the lectures for the class I have, despite my best intentions. I came the heavy lecturer today, which I don't often, but the tutor before us in the classroom overran by five minutes, and five minutes before the end of my lecture a couple of dim-looking students wandered in, closed the door behind them and then stood looking vacant, and were then followed by three more. Apparently they couldn't tell the difference between their class and lecturer and ours. Sometimes I lose hope! Anyway, it was explained to them with heavy sarcasm how the clock worked and how they weren't supposed to come in until the big hand had passed the 12. One apologised, the rest just looked thicker than ever.

There's just one more step to having Death in a Scarlet Gown on CreateSpace - unfortunately for some reason I couldn't get the proofread document uploaded, so I'm hoping that perhaps the new laptop, when it's talking to the internet, might work better. Frustrating when the goal is in sight!

It's unseasonably warm, with daffodils sprouting and birds (notably the raucous oystercatchers) beginning the spring mating dances. Apparently it's going to turn cold again this weekend. Over the last couple of weeks I've looked out the window to find a dozen fieldfares staring in at me (slightly unnerving), seen a buzzard outside an urban school, been flown over by a flock of curlews, seen a black pheasant (I'm absolutely almost sure) and counted three dead badgers on one country road. Allotment Major has been secured, hoorah, for another year! and I've started making the mandatory sign for Allotment Minor. Soon it'll be digging time again ... or at least trying to burrow through the impacted earth of the old bowling green on which Allotment Minor is made.

I'm collecting onion skin for dyeing again - I need loads but fortunately we rarely have an evening meal that doesn't involve an onion. I also have plans for retting nettles this summer for fibre - I want to make paper, anyway, but I'd really like to spin and weave or knit nettle fibre which is absolutely beautiful. I won't have time if I'm running back and forth here to use the internet!