Now is the hour

Now is the hour that longing turns around
For sailors towards what they left behind...
                                        Dante Alighieri.
                                       Translator, Clive James

I have left my home in Viet Nam, temporarily, to try a new setting, with yet to meet new friends, in Ubud, Bali.

Here to regain my health and equanimity, here to write the first draft of a new book, after only four days, the longing for what Ive left behind hit me.
The change of place started in joy soon morphing into, the chair is not right, the desk too high, the insects are different, the sounds unfamiliar.
But now I know that none of this means a thing; it is only that this is not my desk, my chair, my sounds.
and the compensations are too tremendous to complain: fireflies in the early evening dark darting across the rice fields outside the bedroom window; the four hour cremation ceremony yesterday starring a casts of hundreds, a dragon with a twenty metre tail, a giant bull with huge carved horns, a tower creation three stories high with atop the construction, presumably, the bones of the 4 years dead prince; the yoga barn; the massages; the yummy organic food ...Stop. Wait. The Writing? Not yet.

Now is the time to remember what I have left behind. And who.
Now is the time to remember that no matter the environment, the task is the same --to write the best book I possibly can.
Now it is time to lose myself in that world, the Highlands, 1958, the Highland Gazette, to re-join the cast and crew of my invented world, invented yet based on what I know, who I knew, and most of all those remembered hills and mountain, glens and burns, the wind, the air, the rain, and the constant sound of trees moving, water running, and my mother singing. Once upon a time, before she succumbed to the bullying, she sang often.
So now I embark on another novel, I will keep that sound of her singing with me.

And once again, before I start, I have the pivotal scene that leads me into the work. Last time it was nits (head lice).
This time, it is Sunday morning, beach-side mission, Salvation Army tambourine beating the rhythm and we children singing "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" whilst all around us the ungodly are trying to catch the rays to turn Scots-white-blue skin a deeper shade of red to prove they have indeed been on holiday if only "doon the water" to the islands in the Firth of Clyde.
Happy Days.

I hope I can pull it off. But then again, that is why I, we, write.

Aa' the best.

PS yet to find a working title ---'Doon the Water' doesn't work in English.

Ha, at long last I have discovered how to post a blog -- indeed how to open the whole blooming site, bypassing the Comrades who block Facebook and bloggers.
However, I am a guest in this country and accept what is.

So where was I? A new book? Yep, Beneath the Abbey Wall was duly published in November '12 and, I'm pleased to say, has done well in a modest way.

Next up, North Sea Requiem is now being proof-editd and will be out on September the 3rd this year.

Much more importantly for me, is the new book, the one yet to be written, the one where I know what I want to say and am not sure I can pull it off.

Yeah yeah, always with the doubt. Can't help it. Every time I embark on a new book I am terrified. Once writing that evaporates. Once finished, the doubts creep in again. Then you just have to write another to see if you can improve on the previous. Sounds like one of Dante's circles of hell and it is. But not.

Count you blessings, name them one by one, that was one of the songs we sang in Sunday School. That was the song that stayed with me, shaped me.
So I count my blessings:

I am alive. Never complain about getting old because at least you are alive.
I am healthy(ish) Healthy enough to work, swim, drive a motorbike, travel, dance, behave disgracefully in a bar on the beach (even though I hardly ever drink, I do get drunk on joy)
I earn a living through my writing. Modest living, yes, I'd be poor if I lived in the west but wealthy in the little fisherman's cottage in Viet Nam in the village with no name.
I have friends. Wonderful loving supportive friends.
I have family. Ditto above.
I am off to Bali for 3 months. Off to write. To hide. To write. To retreat. To write. To eat well. To write. To exercise. And write write write.

 So there we have it, this random pick of the many blessings in my life --Wonderful huh?

Aa' the best.

Recovery

As in - 'I'm in recovery' --  AKA Help me Rhonda.

I couldn't understand why I am so tired. Jet-lag? No, should be over that. The horrid cold I picked up in New York? Ditto. So what, why, where does the tiredness stem from? Oh yes, the writing.

Deadlines work. But finishing brings loss -- loss of routine, the loss of that creative bubble where loneliness vanishes so all consumed are you by the company of fictional friends --and enemies, where the world you have created has become more real than reality.

When you hit the send key and the work wings off through the ether, there is a sense of loss so profound, I have complete sympathy with Virginia Wolf and her choice of the river. I have to be vigilant; tell myself to drive slowly, stop at red lights, avoid the rip, avoid quarrelling, avoid despair.

I am recovering from writing the bulk of a book in ten weeks. I'm recovering from finishing the last pages on the morning of the day I set off on a 27 hour journey, via Seoul, to the United States (not including a very long journey from JFK airport including a shuttle bus stopping at six destinations befoe mine to the hotel in Manhattan, only to find the place I booked on the Internet had a shared bathroom on a different floor down a steep, and badly lit, and cold staircase) I had to find another hotel so it was 7 hours after landing before I lay down and couldn't sleep.

Then came the thrill of meeting readers and the team at the publishers and seeing the books in shops. Then the joy of New York, of San Diego, of Redondo Beach, of Pasadena. Then San Francisco, and MELTDOWN.

Knowing I must wait out the despair, I tell myself to find joy in the achievement--you finished, on time, you delivered a book you thought impossible to complete. You tell yourself that despair will pass. Doesn't work.
But this time the consolation of strangers who encourage and praise and engage with me about previous novels that I dimly remember is wonderful and makes me want to continue. And I have the joy of holding the new work in my hands.

I was kidding myself when I though the let-down, the stepping off of the cloud that sustained me through the story would not happen. It did. It has. It has happened in San Francisco and has been made more bearable by the city, the diners, the life of the streets and the wonderful apartment I've been lent by generous strangers.

Three days sleeping eating walking.
Now the sun is shining.
Now an idea for a new book is emerging.
Now it is time to begin again.
Gently.

Aa' the best.

Kiss me once...

...it's been a long long time...

I have an excuse, many excuses, but the main one is I finished the major draft of book 4 -
North Sea Requiem, only twelve days ago and the very idea of opening a computer made me exhausted.

Plus the very same day the manuscript was sent off, I boarded a plane to New York and stepped out into air so cold, I caught a cold - a horrid sniffing sneezing snivelling cold. Haven't had one of those since Scotland.

So there I was, doing the rounds of bookshops, signing books, meeting fabulous people, having the thrill of seeing my books on shelves in shops for the very first time, then retreating, miserable to overpriced and underwhelming hotel rooms in New York, feeling crap.

But nothing could ever take away from the thrill, the unbelievable high of seeing those book up there with other authors, especially authors I adore, and thinking, it was all worth it; the backache, the loneliness, the isolation, the insomnia, the rift with friends and family as you immerse yourself in writing, it was worth it.

Back it the real world, travelling, exploring parts of the United States is exciting, and stimulating, and most of all, hearing from readers how they engage with the novels had given new impetus to continuing with the series.

After delivering the manuscript I was thinking, this is it, I'll never write another of these again, I want to write anything other than this series.
Then a lovely woman at Atria my publisher said, the only problem with your books is I have to wait a whole year for the next one. Awwwwe. How can I resist comments like that?

                 
                           Me, the author (it now seems real - I now believe I really am an author)
                                               Mysterious Books, TriBeCa, New York.

Dream Angus 2

And Angus took the photograph on my new header

Dream Angus

In June of 2011, having driven from the east coast of the Highlands through Strath Oykel and around to Ullapool I attempted to photograph the scenery then gave up.

I decided that landscape so grand, so majestic it makes your heart pound at the glory of it all, is impossible to convey in mere photographs. Let it be a dreamscape, a dwamscape, dwams being daydreams in the Scots language.
Then I saw the work of Angus Bruce.

In a cafe in Ullapool, where the tea and the home baking are excellent, the walls were lined with photographs big and small of the landscape and seascapes I had just driven through, had stopped to breath in, had reconnected with - the landscapes of my childhood.

Summers holidays, up through one strath or another, across to Ullapool, to Lochinver, onwards to Kylesku and the ferry, stopping at Cape Wrath on family camping trips.
School climbing trips, scrambling up the scree slopes of Stac Pollaidh, marching through peat bogs and high heather so tough, so gnarled it was hard going even when a fit young teenager, (not that we had teenagers in those days) And the fires the sandy shores of a lochan, brewing billy tea, eating egg  sandwiches and sticky buttered gingerbread, I could taste the taste looking at Angus's photographs
He captures it all, the land of my dreams.

Angus can be found at: www.highlandpix.co.uk

And this is for you Angus:  Annie Lennox - Dream Angus.


And here is the poem

Dream Angus

Chorus
Dreams to sell, fine dreams to sell,
Angus is here with dreams to sell.
Hush now wee bairnie and sleep without fear,
For Angus will bring you a dream, my dear.

Can you no hush your weepin'?
All the wee lambs are sleepin'.
Birdies are nestlin', nestlin' taegether,
Dream Angus is hurtlin' through the heather.

Chorus

Sweet the lavrock sings at morn,
Heraldin' in a bright new dawn.
Wee lambs, they coorie doon taegether
Alang with their ewies in the heather.

Chorus

Meaning of unusual words:
bairnie=child
lavrock=skylark
coorie=huddle

Aa the best

Annie Lennox - Dream Angus