Today’s the day – publication day for the Ulverscroft edition of A Maid and a Man. It’s large print and principally intended for outlets such as libraries but anyone can buy it. If you don’t have an account with Ulvescroft you might try The Reading House.
So why is that a prompt? Nothing like a bit of visible success to spur one on.
A question authors, storytellers, writers, journalists are often asked is – “Where do you find your ideas?”
I don’t think that’s the knowledge that the question is seeking. We all find ourselves involved in stuff. Last weekend, for example, I was a delegate at the Scottish Association of Writers conference in the Westerwood Hotel. At around Midnight on Saturday, there was a small fire: in a laundry, we think. At any rate our taxi driver told us on Sunday that the Spa was closed because there were no towels!
The non-writer may log this information and carry on with their day. The writer’s brain, on the other hand, is in action. How useful to have collaboration like the information there were no towels.
Who benefits from that circumstance? Who loses out because of that circumstance? A fledgling Homewares’ Store might benefit. A wedding planner who has organised a Hen Party in the spa might lose out.
In addition, of course, there was the reaction of all of us guests turned out of our cozy beds for over two hours to stand around in the car park and then sit about in the public areas. And the performance of the local Fire Brigade and the hotel’s staff. It’s not the people watching I would have chosen but it was interesting and informative.
So, it’s not the having been there when it happened but the follow-up questions that give a storyteller their ideas. How did the person on the receiving end of the telephone call I partly heard react to being woken at 1.45 am to learn their caller was ‘fine’? Does that mark the end of a beautiful friendship – or the beginning of one?
(No one was injured and the fire was quickly brought under control.)
News recently in includes the sale of a summer story and a non-seasonal one – both to People’s Friend. Yay!
Also, work is underway on a projected Pocket Novel. It’s an Edinburgh set regency.
You may be interested, too, in the activities of my Capital Friends and can find out more about Kate, Jane, Jennifer and Sheila at capitalwriterscouk.wordpress.com
Anne
Novels Now 