Crossing the Field of Reeds (Part One)
It all began with a cat called Arthur. Arthur was a rescue cat, an older cat and our first cat, when my sister lived at home, before she got married. He came to us from the RSPCA shelter along with his wife Edith. They had really bonded at the rescue centre and there was no way we would ever separate them.
Arthur was, indeed still is, the smartest cat I have ever met. It broke our hearts when he died, leaving his grieving widow Edie behind. The beautiful Edie made it to 21 years old before she followed him.
You always felt that they were communicating with you somehow, far beyond telling you when they wanted to go out or were hungry. As if they were talking to you, even though you weren’t hearing words of course. Arthur, in particular, seemed to be able to look right inside your head.
Well, I was already writing by then, Maddie was writing poetry at that point and just dipping her toe into prose, the books would come later. Writing, really, is a combination of controlled daydreaming and acting on paper. Writers are all cracked actors. So, it wasn’t long before we started having fun ‘voicing,’ Arthur and Edith.
That’s the first part of the story.
Maddie and I enjoy each other’s company and there was a time in our lives, when we would go of on adventures together. In, I think, nineteen ninety one, or thereabouts, I can’t quite be certain and I can’t find the photo album with the dates on it just now, we took a trip to Egypt.
We fell in love with the place and its vast history. It is of course, intimately connected with cats. The cat was first domesticated here, it’s the homeland of the modern domestic cat. Cats were venerated, as protectors of the grain stores and seen as heaven sent creatures. There was a point in its history, when Bastet, the Cat headed Goddess was the state deity.
So, if you put those two things together, in a couple of creative heads, you get a very interesting idea.
Oh, so many things happened then. The idea did become an on again, off again, on again project, tinkered and toyed with over a lot of years, as life continually got in the way, as is often the way of things. We both published our own books. For me, Fantasy and Sci-Fi for Maddie, sharp, funny, women’s interest books, disguised as books about cats (what she calls ‘Kit Lit). We never entirely forgot, or abandoned, what we both just referred to as, ‘The Book,’ when ever it cropped up in conversation.
Enter Covid. I was furloughed from the day job, imagining I might be called back at any time, desperate to get part two of my Bell Hill trilogy finished before that happened, I pushed it through in less than six months. As it turned out, I need not have rushed, since I was in fact made redundant when the furlough scheme began winding down. Anyway, I was a little burned out after Road to Bell Hill and needed to step back before starting part three.
Maddie and I would Skype each other once a week to catch up, turns out, she wanted to take a little break from her own current project. Guess what came up in conversation then? Yes, exactly, ‘The Book,’ the one we had always been going to work together on.
That, gentle readers, is the back story to ‘The Field of Reeds – in Shadows,’ we finally got, ‘The Book,’ out there in the world. It is the first part of a series, just the beginning of an adventure and if you like it and want to know what happens next, we will be happy to tell you…
The Field of Reeds in Shadows
Arthur was, indeed still is, the smartest cat I have ever met. It broke our hearts when he died, leaving his grieving widow Edie behind. The beautiful Edie made it to 21 years old before she followed him.
You always felt that they were communicating with you somehow, far beyond telling you when they wanted to go out or were hungry. As if they were talking to you, even though you weren’t hearing words of course. Arthur, in particular, seemed to be able to look right inside your head.
Well, I was already writing by then, Maddie was writing poetry at that point and just dipping her toe into prose, the books would come later. Writing, really, is a combination of controlled daydreaming and acting on paper. Writers are all cracked actors. So, it wasn’t long before we started having fun ‘voicing,’ Arthur and Edith.
That’s the first part of the story.
Maddie and I enjoy each other’s company and there was a time in our lives, when we would go of on adventures together. In, I think, nineteen ninety one, or thereabouts, I can’t quite be certain and I can’t find the photo album with the dates on it just now, we took a trip to Egypt.
We fell in love with the place and its vast history. It is of course, intimately connected with cats. The cat was first domesticated here, it’s the homeland of the modern domestic cat. Cats were venerated, as protectors of the grain stores and seen as heaven sent creatures. There was a point in its history, when Bastet, the Cat headed Goddess was the state deity.
So, if you put those two things together, in a couple of creative heads, you get a very interesting idea.
Oh, so many things happened then. The idea did become an on again, off again, on again project, tinkered and toyed with over a lot of years, as life continually got in the way, as is often the way of things. We both published our own books. For me, Fantasy and Sci-Fi for Maddie, sharp, funny, women’s interest books, disguised as books about cats (what she calls ‘Kit Lit). We never entirely forgot, or abandoned, what we both just referred to as, ‘The Book,’ when ever it cropped up in conversation.
Enter Covid. I was furloughed from the day job, imagining I might be called back at any time, desperate to get part two of my Bell Hill trilogy finished before that happened, I pushed it through in less than six months. As it turned out, I need not have rushed, since I was in fact made redundant when the furlough scheme began winding down. Anyway, I was a little burned out after Road to Bell Hill and needed to step back before starting part three.
Maddie and I would Skype each other once a week to catch up, turns out, she wanted to take a little break from her own current project. Guess what came up in conversation then? Yes, exactly, ‘The Book,’ the one we had always been going to work together on.
That, gentle readers, is the back story to ‘The Field of Reeds – in Shadows,’ we finally got, ‘The Book,’ out there in the world. It is the first part of a series, just the beginning of an adventure and if you like it and want to know what happens next, we will be happy to tell you…
The Field of Reeds in Shadows
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