Ros Clarke's Blog, page 3

Bonfire Night

Every year, the allotment society hold a Bonfire Night party: food, fireworks and fun for all the family. Holly always goes with her grandfather, only this year he’s stuck in a care home and she’s been looking after his allotment for months. Greg and his kids have only just taken over their plot, but the Bonfire Night party should be a great way to get to know some of the other gardeners. Including the cute girl who spends all her Saturdays working at the allotment just along from Greg’s.

There’s only one thing that’s guaranteed: there are going to be fireworks…

Bonfire Night is a 10,000 word contemporary romance short story.

Excerpt

Holly leaned on her garden fork and wiped the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead.

Whoops.

Make that the back of her very grubby hand. Oh, well, it would wash off and it wasn’t like there was anyone here she was interested in impressing. She tucked her woolly hat more securely around her ears and glanced around the allotment.

A bright, sunny Saturday in mid-October and the place was heaving. All the old lads who came down every day were smugly watching the weekend folks from the comfort of their folding chairs and drinking strong tea from thermos flasks. They’d long since tied up their raspberry canes and pruned back their blackcurrant bushes. You could see the neat patches of ground that had been dug over ready for spring planting, while their winter potatoes and brassicas were still yielding vast crops.

Holly’s grandad would have had his allotment as neat as anyone’s. Ever since he’d retired, it had been his pride and joy. That’s why she was out here now.

Every week, she spent her Saturday taking care of the plot and on Sundays she visited him in the care home with detailed photos of what she’d done. Grandad kept a close eye on the weather forecast and he’d always know exactly what needed doing next. Holly took a notebook with her and carefully wrote down his detailed instructions for the coming week.

Of course, she took him the produce to inspect, too, though the care home weren’t interested in cooking the veg for him. But he enjoyed the soft fruit and sometimes Holly made soup from the veg and smuggled it in with a crusty roll from the baker on the corner.

Today she was supposed to dig up the beans and the peas. She’d already removed the canes and stored them neatly in the potting shed. She was halfway through the first row of beans and wondering why on earth Grandad insisted she grew so many of the darn thngs. Her small freezer was full to bursting with them. She’d be amazed if she got through them all before next summer. She never questioned him, though. It was his allotment and she was just the unpaid labour.

The guy two plots along was here again, she noticed, with his kids. The littlest one didn’t do much except sit in the mud and smear it all over himself, but the older ones were helping, after a fashion.

He was new on the allotment. She’d first noticed him a month or so ago, taking over from India, the hipster woman who’d filled her plot with all kinds of exotic things that no one recognsed. She was after essential oils for her aromatherapy products, she’d told Holly. As well as purple carrots for unspecified reasons. Hardly anything had produced a harvest, though, and none of the other gardeners were surprised that she gave it up after less than a year.

Holly heard all the gossip around the allotment. Everyone asked after her grandad and then told her all the news they thought he might want to hear. She’d relayed the message the blackspot on Colin’s roses that he was sure had come from his neighbour’s plot, but since Shelly and Miranda refused to treat their plants with any chemical controls, there wasn’t much Colin could do about it. He’d won a rosette at every summer flower show for the last fiften years, but who knew whether he’d have a single bloom worth showing next summer.

She’d heard more than she’d ever wanted to know about Bill’s fears for club root on his cabbages and Mr Chen’s fight with the slugs for ownership of his Chinese greens. Holly had been more interested to find out that Kate and Dave in the corner plot were finally expecting their first child and that to celebrate they’d decided to plant a new apple tree.

She hadn’t yet got to know the father of the boy currently stealing the very last of the autumn raspberries from Neal Kennedy’s plot.

‘Hello!’ she called out.

The guy looked up at her and smiled briefly. ‘Hi.’

‘Is he yours?’ Holly nodded across at the boy. ‘Only he’s not really supposed

to eat other people’s crops.’

‘Oh, hell. Elijah! Elijah! Come here now. Sorry,’ he said to Holly. ‘I have told them, but it’s hard to keep an eye on all three of them at once.’

‘Yes, it must be. I’m Holly, by the way.’

‘Greg.’ He retrieved Elijah and told him off, extracting a promise not to do the same thing again. ‘Come on, then, let’s find something more useful to keep you busy. Want to do some digging?’

He lifted his hand to Holly in a friendly way, then turned away to find a small spade. She watched him patiently showing his son how to use his foot to push the spade down, then twist the soil up and out of the way. With the child-sized tool, he couldn’t get far enough down to give the ground the real turnover it needed, but the technique was good. She watched for a few minutes, then pulled up her own fork and started to attack the rest of the beans.

By lunchtime, she was nearly done. She’d brought a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of diet coke. Grandad kept a stool in his shed and since the autumn sun was warming up a bit, Holly dragged it outside and sat down to her meal.

‘That looks comfortable.’

Holly looked up to see Greg holding one muddy child on his hip and the other two standing around him. He was tall and had a sort of rugged look. Although maybe that was just his beard.

‘It works,’ she said.

‘I just wanted to say thanks for earlier. I don’t want this lot becoming a nuisance to anyone.’

‘No problem. Just so you know, that’s Neal Kennedy’s patch and he can be a bit particular. I wouldn’t want your kids to get in trouble with him.’

‘Noted. Do you know all the other allotment holders, then?’

She shrugged. ‘Most of them, a bit.’

‘You’ve been here a while?’

‘Oh, no. Only since April. It’s my grandad’s plot, actually. He knows everyone.’

‘It’s kind of you to help him out.’

‘He had a hip replacement. I said I’d look after it until he could manage it again.’

Greg frowned. ‘Six months to recover from a hip replacement. Is he okay?’

Holly shook her head. ‘A couple of months after the operation he had a stroke. He’s recovering, but it’s slow.’

‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’

‘The allotment is what keeps him going. He’s determined to be digging again in the spring.’

‘Will he make it?’

Holly hadn’t dared to think about it. ‘Probably. I don’t know. Did you know about the allotment bonfire party?’ She pointed to the A4 photocopied poster over on the noticeboard. ‘They’re looking for volunteers to help build it next weekend.’

‘We could do that. What do you think, guys?’

‘Oh!’ Holly interrupted before the kids could speak. ‘It’s not really a family thing. I don’t know if it’s safe for them. But I know Bill’s looking for a couple of extra pairs of hands, if you can leave them with their mum for a few hours.’

His face turned blank and he hoisted the little one higher on his hip, while reaching out to the other two. ‘I can’t do that, sorry.’

Oh, hell. She’d put her foot in it big time and she didn’t even know quite how.

Greg was halfway out of the allotment with the children skipping alongside him before Holly’s brain finally processed what she’d said.

This was why she shouldn’t be allowed near people. She always managed to get it wrong. She didn’t intend to upset people, she really didn’t. But if there was a way to misunderstand, she’d find it. And then she’d dive into it headfirst, smashing people’s feelings all over the place without realising until it was too late.

She screwed the top on her diet coke bottle and put her rubbish in her satchel. There were two and a half rows of peas left to dig up and at least they didn’t have any feelings to hurt.

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Read this book without a kindle.

November 2014

Self published

10,000 word short story

Bonfire Night!

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason

should ever be forgot.

What better thing to do on a dark, cold autumn night than light a huge bonfire and set off fireworks? It’s a fabulous celebration. I have very happy memories of Bonfire Nights when I was a child, waving a sparkler, excited beyond measure at seeing it write my name in the air. We’d go home afterwards for hot chocolate and cheesy baked potatoes. Lots of fun.

But it didn’t originate just as a fun thing to cheer up a cold season. Bonfire Night’s been an English tradition since 1605, when a conspiracy to blow up the House of Lords – and in so doing kill the king – was discovered and foiled. The man in charge of the pile of explosives was Guy Fawkes, and so Bonfire Night was known as Guy Fawkes night. In many places, there was a tradition of burning a ‘guy’ – a figure made out of clothes stuffed with straw, to represent Guy Fawkes. Or, depending who you were, the Whore of Babylon, i.e. the pope.

Complicated 17th century political and religious origins notwithstanding, Bonfire Night is a really fun tradition. Much more so, in my opinion, than Halloween a few nights earlier where children are encouraged to go round begging sweets from strangers.

And to celebrate Bonfire Night this year I have a new story! More about that later…

Technology woes and a new title

Everything has broken.

Well, okay, not quite everything. My Kindle is old and slow with a cracked case, but I can still read things on it so long as I give it time to find them first. My phone is working, yay! My netbook has the screen hanging off by one hinge. After the other hinge broke, the keyboard stopped working and then the wireless adapter stopped working. It had been waiting for a trip to the Tip Of Doom. Until yesterday when my main work laptop died. Utterly, completely died. No lights, no sound, no action.

You may imagine how traumatic it was to get home after Bible study and realise I had no way of watching the Great British Bake Off on iPlayer. Having confirmed that the big laptop wasn’t coming back to life, I tried the netbook again. I am typing on it now. It’s slow and very fragile, but it is now more or less operational. But I can’t do any work on it.

So today I bought a new laptop. It is shiny. And it has Windows 8.1 which is not nearly as horrible as I had feared. You can use a normal desktop and not go near the tiles bit at all. I have mostly managed to install all the software I need, though I have lost the serial key for BibleWorks which is a bit worrying. I have emailed support, but I’m not hopeful. I’ve had fun trying to remember all the passwords I normally don’t need to know. I locked myself out of this site for a while and had to change things in myphpadmin which was a bit scary.

ANYWAY. Before things all died yesterday, I had been working on the formatting of my new short story and was hoping to have pressed publish today. That is not going to happen. The story is safe but the cover has been lost. I had uploaded the cover here but not the latest version with a new title! So I need to redo that. And then check that I haven’t lost any revisions. And redo the formatting. I hope to press publish tomorrow.

Oh, the new title. It made me laugh so much when I thought of it, and twitter and facebook were uncharacteristically unanimous in support of it. So, ‘Grass is Always Greener’ will now be known as ‘Not My Field.’

Yarny Yarn Yarndale!

I have just got back from a very mini mini-break. This involved a lovely spa day yesterday (lovely except for the two women who insisted on having loud conversations in the Quiet Room with Serenity Pool. My irritation at their noisiness adversely affected my serenity.) And then I stayed at a B&B last night and treated myself to dinner at an Indian restaurant (yum, yum, yum). Breakfast this morning was possibly the worst cooked breakfast I have ever had. And my expectations had been so high that it really was a huge disappointment.

But I soon got over it because I was headed for Skipton and the main goal of the mini-break: Yarndale. It’s well over 2 years since I last went to a yarny, fibre-y, woolly show of this sort and I was particularly excited about this one. I don’t generally do well with things that involve thousands of people all in one place, but for a few hours, with strategic breaks to sit down and read a book, it was wonderful.

There were sheep.

And alpacas. Also angora rabbits but my photo of them is dreadful. Use your imagination: three cute fluffy rabbits.

It’s £8 for a ticket. I do quite often resent paying high ticket prices for these kind of things, since it is basically a ticket to be allowed in to go shopping. However, at Yarndale, I did feel that the cost was worth it. They had gone to HUGE effort to make a livestock market feel like a fun, welcoming place to be. I loved the bunting, the yarn bikes, the signs outside.

 

There were at least four signs like this, all in different colours and styles. You couldn’t miss it if you tried!

Outside the main entrance, the trees were all hung with bunting and balls of knitting/crochet.

Inside, there was bunting…

And more bunting…

Can you have too much bunting?

Further in, there was this incredible display of round crochet shapes (I am not all that comfortable with the term mandala – seems appropriative to me). But they were stunning.

All 1182 of them!

These weren’t in the main display, just on one of the stands, but I liked them a lot.

They seemed in keeping with the yarn bikes!

I didn’t do the wool walk, but they decorate the whole path up to the auction mart from the town with knitted and crocheted bits and pieces. I didn’t get to hear the brass band, but I love that they had one. There was also a nicely produced brochure with several little patterns for things and a couple of articles, as well as information about all the stalls. And, as far as I could tell, enough loos, which is the most important thing about any event with thousands of people. There were also plenty of seating areas dotted about the whole place, a couple of cafes (I took a packed lunch but what I saw other people eating looked nice and reasonably priced). I arrived early and parked very near the building so I don’t know if there were problems with parking later in the day.

In the Knit and Natter Lounge, Lucy from Attic24 held court, surrounded by lots and lots of her lovely crochet:

A crocheted street!

Crocheted wreath. Crocheted lampstand.

More crochet! I love the bunting with sheep on it.

In general, I would say it was as well-organised an event as I’ve been to, and I really loved all the little touches which made it feel more than just a shopping arcade for people who like crafts. I did do some shopping, but even if I hadn’t, I think I would have been glad to go. Many of the stalls had beautiful displays too.  A couple of stallholders asked me not to take photos, so I didn’t. I won’t say who because I assume they don’t want the publicity. Seems an odd choice to me. I know, I know, they are worried about imitations and possibly even copyright infringement. But I really think it is a shortsighted decision. Anyway, here are some that I did take.

This was from a local embroidery guild to celebrate the Tour de France in Yorkshire.

Nest had a HUGE tree (this is only half of it) adorned with various knitted things.

I loved these hooked cushions and samplers. Very tempted to make one for the forthcoming niece/nephew.

Needlefelted teeny tiny animals!

Absolutely stunning felted/embroidered art. This was £950. I did not buy it, but I did buy a little card with a small felted/embroidered piece on it by the same artist.

Corn dollies! I enjoyed that there were several very traditional crafts on show in amongst all the modern yarn.

Woolly wedding dress!!! I love it.

Natural Dye Studio crocheted blankets are always amazing to look at.

I think this star one might have been my favourite.

Campervans!

Campervans and… beard holder?

Gorgeous crochet and adorable felted terrier.

They weren’t actually selling the knitted knickers but I loved the display!

 

And one which didn’t quite work…

It evoked in me the strongest desire to rescue all the poor knitted animals from the hangman’s noose, I’m afraid. Also, that is not a random black and white or sepia photo, they really were all knitted in colours of death.

 

And finally, my loot:

 

The most beautiful ceramic buttons. The little felt/embroidery card. 100g dyed Teesdale locks. 100g braid of BFL. 5x50g skeins of sockweight yarn in co-ordinating solids/semi-solids/variegated from Natural Dye Studio. That was my biggest splurge. I am going to try a modular crochet scarf in the style of the NDS patterns.

And this is teeny tiny needlefelted Pingu. He is about an inch and a quarter tall. Say hello to Pingu (and don’t point out his wonky beak, he’s very self-conscious about it.)

 

So that was my mini-break. In general, I enjoyed it very much and I shall try to forget this morning’s terrible breakfast in all the glorious yarniness.

Covers

In a discussion about romance novel covers last week, someone asked why they couldn’t have beautiful covers like some of the ones on this page. I pointed out the need for the covers to carry the right genre signals and to be affordable. But then I thought, why not?

So here are some possible new covers for a couple of my books:

And here’s one that I actually think I might use:

It’s for the anthology of short stories I’m planning to publish later this month. I thought I might try putting it out in two different editions – the romance box set style and the slightly less genre specific style. And then see what happens.

Which do you like best? And which would you be more likely to buy?

Not My Field

There’s an immovable object: Mike’s dairy farm in Somerset isn’t going anywhere.

And there’s an irresistible force: university lecturer, Carla, who has brought so much fun and joy into his life over the last few months.

But when she’s offered a senior position in a German university, they both know something’s going to have to give. NOT MY FIELD is a story about grown up people learning to take risks, make compromises, and in the end, choose love. Due out VERY SOON INDEED.

Grass Is Always Greener

There’s an immovable object: Mike’s dairy farm in Somerset isn’t going anywhere.

And there’s an irresistible force: university lecturer, Carla, who has brought so much fun and joy into his life over the last few months.

But when she’s offered a senior position in a German university, they both know something’s going to have to give. GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER is a story about grown up people learning to take risks, make compromises, and in the end, choose love. Due out on September 16th.

Love In A Few Pages

A collection of some of my romance short stories. Due out on September 30th.

Romantic serials

There is a truism among the self-publishing fraternity that the way to make money is to write a series of books, make the first one free, and watch the cash roll in. As a side note, this advice is useless to me, since I am congenitally incapable of writing series.

But there is a problem with series in romance. A romance has to have a focus on the central relationship AND an emotionally satisfying ending, whether that’s Happy Ever After (HEA) or Happy For Now (HFN). So how do you write book 2, when you’ve already reached that ending in book 1? There are a number of solutions: use a different central couple in each book; write books in some other genre with a single romantic arc over the whole series (technically, these are probably novels with romantic elements, rather than romances); or write a series of books in which the same couple face different relationship challenges. This third option seems to be increasingly popular recently. Actually, I can’t think of any examples from more than about five years ago (please let me know in the comments if I’m wrong about this). Some authors who do this will end each book on a resolution, but others won’t even do that, keeping readers hanging until the next installment.

As the self-publishing forums will attest, these series are very popular. You hook the readers with the first (free) book and hope you can keep them through the whole series. I’ve read a few and been caught up in the need for the narrative conclusion. At four o’clock this morning I was ready to click buy on book 4 in the most recent series I’ve been reading, only stymied by the fact that it isn’t out yet. I needed to get to the end of the series, because the end of the book doesn’t feel like a real end. That’s the point, of course, because that’s what gets you to buy the next book. But as a reading experience, Book X of Y in a Series is completely different from Stand Alone Book.

Part of the reason I love reading romance is the promise of the happy ending. Whatever else happens in the book – whatever else is going on in the world – there is a promise that the central couple will end up together and happy. There’s a security in that ending which makes the reading experience safe for me. There’s a resolution to the narrative which leaves me satisfied as I put the Kindle down, turn the light off and go to sleep. That’s a really, really important part of the romance reading experience for me.

It’s also an important thing from a narrative point of view. A standalone romance tells a complete story: beginning, middle and end. It is the story of that couple. It’s not necessarily the story of their whole lives, but it is the story which defines their relationship. We know that whatever happened before was background, and whatever comes after will be the outworking of the events of the book. We might enjoy another glimpse of the characters if they appear in the first sort of series, as secondary characters in someone else’s story. We probably expect that they will have ups and downs in their relationship like everyone else. But we know that their story has been told.

What happens when you stop writing romances and start writing serials is that the promise implicit in the ending is broken. I can’t leave the couple at the end of the book (even if it appears to be a happy ending) secure within those pages, because I know that more is coming. Whatever the ending is, it’s only going to be provisional. For me, that means it is unsatisfying. The book doesn’t give me the same reading experience as a romance novel, even if in every other respect it looks like it fits the definition of a romance novel.

The other thing that happens when you stop writing romances and start writing serials, I think, is that the books inevitably take on a soap opera kind of character. Because there is no final resolution in most of the books, there’s always a forward drive. One storyline may appear to be resolved but another one will be left hanging. Or we’ll know that whatever resolution there appears to be, something will happen to threaten it in the future. So there’s never the same satisfaction in the resolutions, or the same fear in the black moments. Plots cycle round, dragging readers with them in a tumble dryer of emotional manipulation.

It’s addictive. You want to know what happens next. But ultimately for me, it’s never a satisfying reading experience. Even if the series is completed, I find that the repeated cycles of conflict and resolution leave me anxious and cynical. And sometimes bored. There was a huge outcry last year when Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series was extended from three to five books. I’d read the first two and been looking forward to the third, but when I heard that I didn’t buy it. Partly because I thought that was a cynical move on the part of Day and/or her publisher and partly because I’d already been through enough with that couple. I wanted resolution, not more dragging out of their story.

And, of course, that’s another danger with serials in progress – they may never be finished.

So I’m going to try to avoid serials from now on, and I’m going to hope that this trend will die a quiet death before too long.

Books for sale (not romance)

I’ve been sorting through my office and I have several books I’d like to sell. I had a look at Amazon and the fees they charge are high! If they don’t sell here, I’ll maybe list them on ebay, but I thought I’d try cutting out the middle man first.  I haven’t read them all and I am not endorsing their content!

I haven’t included p&p, but I’ll charge that at cost. Payment via Paypal, please.  May be open to offers, especially if you’re buying more than one book.

If you’re interested in any of them please email me (use the website contact form if you don’t have my email address) and I’ll get back to you shortly. Thanks for looking and please do forward to anyone you know who might be interested!

ALL books are in very good condition. Some are as new, others have been read but are unmarked and unharmed. If you want more details on any of them, please ask. I’ve linked to the Amazon page for the specific edition where possible and noted where not.



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