Joyce Barrass's Blog, page 55

Tour de Yorkshire passes through Flamborough - setting for my next novel "Keepers of the Kittiwakes"

Flamborough, North LandingToday's the day the ‪#‎TourDeYorkshire‬ starts in Sewerby, passing through Flamborough, Bempton and Buckton before crossing into North Yorkshire. Crowds are lining the beautiful route which will finish in Scarborough at around 4pm today (May 1st). 

Readers who are getting excited about the sequel to "Goatsucker Harvest" - the cliffs and countryside around Flamborough are the gorgeous setting for my next book "Keepers of the Kittiwakes"! So keep your eyes peeled for more mysterious and mesmerising glimpses of Yorkshire!

Goatsucker Harvest: "Mother Seacole. I'm shattering. Shivering in shards like glass"

Mary Seacole (1805-1881)"Was this Mary Seacole, with her dark eyes and certain step of motherly sense and comfort, bringing biscuits, rum and soft blankets? Was she here to try and revive Matty again?"

"Mother Seacole. I'm shattering. Shivering in shards like glass."

- "Goatsucker Harvest" Chapter 22 'Ravage and Ruin' (c) Joyce Barrass 2014

In "Goatsucker Harvest," Jem Kitson, the traumatised Crimean veteran, invalided home to Yorkshire after the Charge of the Light Brigade, recalls the tender care of Mary Seacole, the nurse who was unsung heroine of the Crimean battlefields, her story often overshadowed by history's halo around her contemporary, Florence Nightingale.

This programme on 'YouTube' gives a dramatised insight into "Mary Seacole: the Real Angel of the Crimea" and gives an intriguing glimpse into the background to my novel and the events that bring Jem home a broken man.

Mary Seacole Part 1

Mary Seacole Part 2

Mary Seacole Part 3

Mary Seacole Part 4

You can discover more about my novel on this blog, or purchase it from Amazon in the UK here or in the USA here or in Australia here.

Goatsucker Harvest: A "Receipt" for Victorian Intrigue

A few readers were a bit puzzled by Thirza's use of the word 

"receipt" instead of "recipe" in "Goatsucker Harvest." No, it

wasn't an inadvertent mistake!


The title of this 1847 cookery book, "Lady's Receipt-Book" 

shows that in the mid nineteenth century, those two words

still hadn't quite parted company to mean "written

acknowledgment of money received" or "cookery method"

exclusively.

Oh, those Victorians!

Springwatch Special from the stunning Yorkshire Coast setting of my next novel!

Springwatch Special this Good Friday (April 3rd 2015) on BBC TV is being beamed from the Yorkshire cliffs where my next novel is set! Details of the programme are here in the Yorkshire Post: Springwatch brings region’s wildlife delights to new audience

Tune in to soak up the atmosphere and see the amazing place where seabirds take centre stage. Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes and Puffins throng the coast here. But back in Victorian times, who would protect them from trophy-seekers with shotguns from the city?

I'm already brewing up more drama and a sea of skulduggery and Victorian villainy set between Bempton & Filey Brigg & the sea caves to the tip of Flamborough Head for you all to enjoy!

Thanks to all of you who have been enjoying my first novel set in Victorian Yorkshire, "Goatsucker Harvest," leaving amazing reviews on Amazon and letting me know how much you are enjoying the adventures of Thirza and Bram (and Piper the kooikerhondje, of course!). 

Thank you for helping to spread the word to new readers, who can get a copy of the first novel set on the wild bogs and fens around Doncaster on Kindle or in paperback here: Amazon UK or here Amazon.com or here Amazon.com.au. 

Hope you'll enjoy the next story just as much! Watch this space for more information and batten down the hatches for the reading ride of a lifetime along the cliffs and in the caves!

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North Landing at Flamborough, North Yorkshire, one of the stunning settings for Joyce Barrass's second novel

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY!

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY to my friends and readers everywhere!

Overjoyed to say that reactions and reviews for my debut novel "Goatsucker Harvest" have been going from strength to strength since the publication of the Kindle Version on Christmas Eve and the launch of the title in paperback in January. You can read the UK reviews on Amazon here and Australian reviews here. All your feedback is SO much appreciated & helps future readers choose to dive into unknown waters confidently! Thank you!

While researching my second novel, set on the North Sea Coast of Yorkshire, this week I had an amazing dream involving characters from both books. This dream planted some fantastic seeds in my imagination and helped to give a whole new spin on the plot that will twist it in some unexpected directions that I hope will delight and intrigue my readers. They blew me away, so that's a good start!

I always find it fascinating to discover what my favourite writers are reading. After all, keeping the wells of our imaginations primed with incredible imput is precious creative lifeblood.

So here are some books I've been enjoying in the past month or so, which I'd recommend if they appeal to you:

"Alias Grace" by Margaret Attwood (fictionalised account of a 19thc female murder accused.)

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell (mesmerising off-the-wall fantasy following the life of one girl from teenage years to maturity in the near future, told in a series of five very distinctive first person narratives. Often laugh-out-loud hilarious, sometimes disturbing, with extra-terrestrial good and evil struggles and including a closing vision of the world as it might well be if humanity carries on consuming and manipulating creation at the current pace.)

"Elizabeth is Missing" by Emma Healey (mystery narrated by an octogenarian woman with Alzheimer's - an incredible read, recommended to anybody dealing with dementia, which might include any of us at any time.)

"The Miniaturist" by Jessie Burton (thriller set in 17thc Amsterdam - mouthwatering literary fiction with a magical realism vibe.)

"Waterlog" by Roger Deakin (I just wanted to pack my bags and swim in all the secret watery places, the rivers, streams. spas, lakes and lidos Deakin explores in this beautiful journey through Britain. Haunting and unforgettable.)

I'll stop there for now! For many like me, with relapsing/remitting autoimmune diseases, brainfog and bone-crunching exhaustion sometimes means reading (and writing) can become almost impossible for wilderness months at a stretch. So when I'm having a relatively healthy period these days, I try to pack in as much as I can, whenever I can!

Whatever you read, or write, I hope you enjoy it, and celebrate it and share it!
Books help us dip through into different universes, timeframes and lives, so every moment we're breathing, we can live a life less limited. What a joy and a privilege, eh?

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for UK readers)

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for US readers)

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for AUS readers)

Goatsucker Harvest: Naming names

Seeing a SEAGRAVE grave ( my great great granduncle Solomon's) in Gleadless, Sheffield
It's no secret that family history is to me what sitting in his writing shed was to Roald Dahl - inspirational!
Most characters in "Goatsucker Harvest" I christened with first names and surnames that appear somewhere up my own knotty and gnarly family tree.
A beloved sixth cousin of mine - does anybody but a genealogy buff actually KNOW any of their sixth cousins? - was delighted when she downloaded 'Goatsucker Harvest' onto her Kindle, to discover I'd used the name of her own great grandmother (a distant limb among the seventeen thousand plus individuals on my tree), namely Kerenhappuch. Our real live Kerenhappuch was actually a cockle picker, born in 1843. 
I've no idea what Kerenhappuchs in the real world were called for short as a nickname. I only know how many crazy misspellings officials managed - 'Karen Dappack' being my particular favourite from the 1861 census! The name's biblical, one of Job's daughters in the Old Testament, Keren-Happuch, 'child of beauty' or, less meaningful to us moderns, 'horn of antimony'! 
In 'Goatsucker Harvest', I take the liberty of calling Thirza's great grandmother "Happy" for short. Keren-"Happy"-Happuch's only mentioned when Kezzie (named after Kezia, a distant cousin three times removed, one of my paternal gran's Ilkeston forebears) remembers wearing her mother Happy's corset on her wedding day. Something borrowed, like my ancestor's amazing names!
The Holberry family at the heart of the story are named after my 3x great grandmother Sarah Holberry, a Victorian farmer's wife in Hatfield near Doncaster, the area where the novel's set. Sarah's cousin was the Sheffield Chartist hero Samuel Holberry, who died in York Jail, now the Castle Museum, in 1842 on the treadmill, the same invention attributed to Sir William Cubitt, and mentioned with regret by him as the plot unrolls for his fictional incarnation. 
Similarly, the Kitson clan. My 5x great grandmother Diana "Dinah" Kitson, herself a woman of the Yorkshire waterways, has her name used twice in the book, for the family at Kitson's Windmill and as Thirza's mother's Christian name. Thirza herself is called after several of my own distant cousins.
Darnell borrowed his moniker from the surname of my 4x great grandmother, Dinah Darnell and her Darnell kin from the Lincolnshire wolds and coast. I took especial joy in using this name for the Machiavellian inventor, as "Darnel" is also an old word for "tares" or "weeds" that grow among the wheat, symbolic of the troublesome growth not always fully rooted out until harvest time.
The shadowy "Dr Stenson Seagrave" is called after two of my great grandmothers, Polly Stenson & Alice Seagrave. Alice was niece of the Sheffield seedsman Solomon Seagrave, after whose Victorian plant nurseries several streets in Sheffield are still named (see photo).
Bram takes his unusual name from the East Yorkshire Beharrells who were the kinsmen and women of Sarah Ann Beharrell, married in 1871 to a great great granduncle of mine, moving from Hull to live in Rotherham, not far from the canal.
Even "Thistle" is named after the keel on which my 3x great granddad and his son were master and mate on the night of the 1881 census, in Albert Dock in Hull (watermen who inspired me to make Jack Holberry and his family spring to life in 'Goatsucker Harvest.')
So it goes, with nearly every name you read in the 'Goatsucker Harvest' story. Hidden thankful tributes to the ones gone before who inspire me.
Chester, Charlesworth, Brunyee, Hanson, Jacques, Canner, Wraith, Poskitt, Salkeld, Foljambe and the rest. Echoes of the genes that still sing in my blood; family, kinsfolk and their neighbours along the canals and moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Isle of Axholme and beyond, down the centuries.
They aren't the strangest or the silliest names on my tree. Not by far! That honour would perhaps belong to Garnish Broadbent, Kelita Hall (both male) or poor old Original Bottom. But that's for another story!

Goatsucker Harvest: Now in paperback, too!

I spent this week climbing the feverish learning curve that is independent publishing. Margins, bleed, trim sizes, formatting, ISBNs...to get Goatsucker Harvest into paperback and out to the small (but very important to me) group of readers who still prefer to have a physical copy of a book rather than on Kindle. They want to touch it. Feel it. Flip the pages. Sniff it. Gift it to friends. Have it signed. Turn the corners down. Caress the glossy cover (is that just me?)

So here it is. It'll be live and available on Kindle and also in paperback on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and CreateSpace estore. I've proofed the proofs and nodded the authorial nod for its launch.

Trouble at t'mill that'll haunt your dreams and warm your heart forever!

Please, if you enjoy it, pop a quick review on Amazon to let others know what they're missing and what they've got to look forward to! Thank you so much!

You can read reviews here.

Goatsucker Harvest: Coconut Cake!

Readers of "Goatsucker Harvest" will understand why the arrival of this little delicacy on my doormat caused such hilarity!

It was part of the first "Graze Box" I've had in a while and plopped onto my mat with this morning's post.
New item - "Coconut Crumble Cake." No, actually, the "prickly texture of straw and horsehair and a sickly sweetness like treacle mixed with sawdust" didn't apply this time! This piece has a saucy little passionfruit and mango dip with it!

“Where is your plate, Theresa? You must try the coconut cake. The receipt is a closely-guarded secret and the ingredients imported especially, I believe. Neither the hoi, nor, indeed, the polloi have tasted this.”

“Your new cook's clever to make something...” she coughed, searching for a polite word that would also be true, “ ... so different.” 'Delicious' would have been cruel flattery. Different it certainly was from anything Thirza had tasted on land or sea."

All quotes taken from "Goatsucker Harvest" [Kindle Edition] Chapter 5 'Carrdyke' (c) Joyce Barrass 2014

Goatsucker Harvest: The watery wonderworld of the Humber Keel

“Rise your tack!” 

Thirza clung onto the tiller kicking against her, the neck of a huge oaken sea-monster butting her in the ribs. The calls of keelmen and women, wharfingers, the cough of wind in sailcloth, had been her lullaby since before she was born. Voices of salt and shimmering rainbows of sound whispered all around her. She'd heard it all from the snug shelter of her mother Dinah's womb. Back then she couldn't tell the womb's throbbing walls from the sea swell beyond. But she knew they were both her home." -(c) Joyce Barrass (2014) 'Goatsucker Harvest'  Kindle Edition. 

"Thistle," the Humber Keel in 'Goatsucker Harvest,' I named after the boat on which my 3x great grandfather, Samuel Barrass & his family were captain & crew on the night of the census 1881. I come from a long line of Barrass & Pattrick mariners, sailmakers, keel and sloop families from Doncaster, Stainforth, Thorne & Hull. They were born, lived, worked, played and often died afloat on canals such as the Stainforth & Keadby. They inspired much of Thirza's story, as the book's dedication reveals. 

I've had the joy of sailing on the restored-to-sail Humber Keel "Comrade" a few times, between Ferriby Lock & Hull. You'll see Comrade's mainsail & topsail on the cover of the book, one of the many photos I snapped while aboard. I even took a turn at her tiller under the Humber Bridge! As the skipper, Colin, wryly quipped: "Your Barrass ancestors would be turning in their graves!" Maybe. Though quite a few of them came to a watery grave down the years, faceplanting off boats, drowning, choking in the mud, colliding with the quayside or getting accidentally knocked senseless by the yardarm. At least I didn't ground her (quite!).

It was such a thrill & privilege to taste what my family's and Thirza's lives were like on the Yorkshire waterways. That's  thanks to the amazing volunteers of the HKSPS - 'The Humber Keel & Sloop Preservation Society'. See more photos & info on these historic ships on their site Humber Keel & Sloop Preservation Society website & FB page HKSPS Facebook page! 
The Yorkshire Waterways Museum at Goole (the "Venice of the North"!) is also a wonderful place to visit to learn more about this watery wonderworld.


Humber Keel diagram from http://www.goole-on-the-web.org.uk/pu...

Goatsucker Harvest: The windmill - titillation, torment and terror?

The old "jog-scry" aka "joggle screen" or "jiggle screen" at Quainton Windmill in Bucks (from the Quainton Mill Website)How could an innocent old windmill become an instrument of titillation and torment? Even terror?

Above you see a rare example of a "jog scry" or joggling/jiggling screen used in some windmills as a flour grading machine before the invention of wire screens.

The Jog-Scry in Kitson's Windmill in Goatsucker Harvest inspires one character profoundly. Too profoundly, perhaps. It arouses memories and secret, sinister associations in him that have devastating consequences for the people of Turbary Nab.

Disturbing changes are afoot. Humble, run-down Kitson's Windmill is about to become transformed. The unsuspecting townspeople of Victorian Doncaster and beyond are about to encounter something monstrous on their calm horizon. The ancient alchemy of the peat marshes of South Yorkshire is about to be unleashed!

Download "Goatsucker Harvest" now on your Kindle (if you dare!)

[Below are the earthbound remains of some of the local windmills that were in the author's imagination when she was writing about the area with a fictional glow.]

Thorne Windmill by F.W. Jackson Fishlake Windmill near Doncaster West Nab Windmill, Fishlake near Doncaster Lings Windmill at Hatfield Woodhouse, Dunscroft near Doncaster Thorne Windmill near Doncaster