International Women’s Day

COURTING THE COUNTESS

Throughout the world in 2024 there are many disenfranchised people. It’s likely that over half of them will be women.

One of the over-arching themes of my writing is women’s path into education and greater enfranchisement.

I’ve written about women struggling to get to the local primary school – Moving On, Staying Put for DC Thomson’s People’s Friend. About women struggling to avoid a being a wife should be enough existence – Mariah’s Marriage for MuseItUp. About women fighting to attend chemistry classes and thereafter qualify as doctors – A Class of their Own for DC Thomson again. About a woman struggling to recover from injury and avoid the marriage that would rob her of her inheritance – Courting the Countess – Joffe Books.

I hope much of it with humour, drama and great dialogue (cue references to te influence of Georgette Heyer) but of course that’s for the reader to decide. I was very touched by a private messagr during the publication of Moving On, Staying Put to tell me how much it was being enjoyed as a story about where we lived. It’s lovely to hear from readers.

How does your work address an issue that is relevant on International Women’s Day?

Anne

Just Check

Okay, so you’ve thought up the most delicious name for the firm that your heroine runs and you’re congratulating yourself for being so clever.

Huh!

Just check and there it is – already in use in the real world.

Drat!

Thinking cap on – the model’s, above, is very fetching. New name created and – just checked – no firm already in existence.

Yay! Back on track.

Anne

Beautiful Spring Sunshine – Happy Easter

As Easter is latish this year, there were a lot of flowering plants to see in RBGE yesterday.

Hacquetia epipactis variegata

The pretty ground cover plant above was covering ground in the borders.

Cushion in the tufa wall house.

I adore these tiny flowers growing out of what looks very like a pin cushion.

Looks like great weather in Edinburgh again, today. Maybe it’ll encourage our magnolia into bloom. That’s now weeks behind thanks to the cold and damp conditions in March.

Weather obsessive? Who, me?

Anne

The End in Sight

The Heart Monitor I’ve been wearing for two weeks at the behest of UKBiobank came off this morning and is ready to go in the post. It’s been no trouble at all apart from the question of how to wash my hair and still keep the monitor dry. Answer – bring forward the hairdressing appointment.

The project I’ve been working on for most of the year is almost, almost, tantalisingly close to being – FINISHED. But, unlike a heart monitor, it’s preying on the heartstrings. Saying goodbye to these characters has been particularly difficult and I reduced myself to tears last night as I wrote out one of them. Didn’t even commit fictional murder, just waved…

A modest selection

Writers out there – How is The End for you? Do you have a plan, like the next project waiting in the wings? Do you mine the notebooks?

Anne

A Significant Day

Some things in life are inevitable even if they come round slowly.

I grew up in the Lothians and while my mum was alive drove out there often. Today I was making a significant visit. Doesn’t matter why. I’d forgotten what a frost hollow it is. Nearly went over on the slippy pavements. Didn’t.

Home now. Here’s a dragon from Vietnam – just ‘cos.

Anne

Missing in Action

Inlay Taj Mahal

Life has its ups and its downs. They enrich the fabric, but sometimes when it’s a series of downs, you have to stand back.

There will be a Round Robin post here on May 27th. Thank you for sticking with me.

Bare Bones and Cover-ups

The Bare Bones of a story often arrive unheralded and at an inconvenient moment. Having a notebook to hand might be the ideal, but it ain’t always possible. So how do I hold that thought?

An image helps. The lovely lady above was photographed in an Eastern museum. She hasn’t inspired anything yet, but I have the distinct feeling she will and I’m so glad to have her image readily to hand.

Once the bare bones are lodged in your head the question of what next arises. How do you add flesh or covering, cosy curves or flamboyant frocks without losing the initial inspiration?

It was a process I found quite stressful in learning the art of novel writing. Starting out with plays means your head makes allowance in the writing for what the director and actor will bring to any character. Description is hardly needed and as to Stage Directions…Unless you’re the ghost of JM Barrie, forget it. The director certainly will.

Clothing the story and the characters is a lovely creative process. I saw a gentleman through the bus window this morning. Tall, his own hair, smartly dressed – but wait – sporting a bow-tie? Who wears a bow-tie?

And I was off – running. So look out for a story with a dandy, unreliable and petulant, in a bow-tie.

Sorry chaps.

Daisy’s Dilemma contains a few scenes about clothes and clothing. Appearances were so important in the fashionable world – nothing changes, does it – that Tobias instantly sees the problem faced by his young cousin, Elspeth when Daisy brings it to him. She will never attract a suitable husband if she is only the bare bones of a lady. Daisy, however, can be relied upon to have a plan.

Spring Gardens

Calthorpe Community Gardens

There’s an abundance of wonderful flowering shrubs, trees and plants around us at this time of year. Even in the heart of London – Camden, walking distance from King’s Cross railway station – Calthorpe Community Gardens hold a variety of plants and herbs. It was a joy last week when I was in London for RNA matters to walk out of my hotel and find this green lung within five minutes.

 

Magnolia, home

My husband is the gardener around our place and his spring garden is the moment when it’s at its most spectacular. The young magnolia tree was particularly beautiful this year.

 

Garden magnolia

On Friday, I walked across to the British Museum where I saw a great exhibition of art and artifacts made by the native peoples of the Torres Straits Islands. On the way I rested a bit in the gardens of Bloomsbury Square. I’ve been collecting photographs of daisies from various places to help advertise my upcoming Daisy’s Dilemma and Bloomsbury Square provided Daisies with added pigeons.

 

Bloomsbury Square Gardens

We have pigeons and they’ve stripped a cherry in next door’s garden of its fruit. They fly into it and grab at the thin twiggy ends of the branches with their feet. Several heart-stopping seconds of aerobatic antics later and they gain a perch. It would be funny, but in five weeks time they’ll be making the same hopeless landings in our blackcurrant bushes causing a lot of damage.

It’s great to walk the streets my heroine would have known. I stopped to admire a blue plaque marking the first terraced houses John Nash put up in the late eighteenth century. still standing and in good order they house a dental clinic today.

Daisy’s Dilemma amazon UK http://goo.gl/iMFFVu amazon US http://goo.gl/DMUXzK

Updating Stuff: Storyteller Alley

The very lovely Veronica at Storyteller Alley was in touch about my submission to appear on their great site. StorytellerAlley There was a list of questions to answer and a list of pictures to supply. It prompted me to look again at how I was presenting myself. So I’ve updated my author bio. It’s below. And while I’ve gone with my Facebook photo for now, here’s one taken by Scarlet Wilson, HM&B medical author extraordinaire, on Monday evening. I did take the camera case off before she snapped. My camera case is featured quite enough across the web. Might get a little big-headed, no?

 

 

Scottish writer Anne Stenhouse writes dialogue rich historical romance with humour and a touch of mystery in the plot. She lives in Edinburgh in the UK and gets the chance to walk the cobbled streets that appear in some of her fiction because they remain part of the city’s fabric. Anne enjoys wandering in cityscapes, visiting historic houses (particularly the below stairs and outhouses areas) and reading up on life in times past. She finds that place can be very stimulating to the imagination.

She wrote stage drama for many years and enjoyed seeing it performed at both amateur and professional level. Her non-fiction has appeared in Scottish Memories and the magazine of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute among others and her short fiction in magazines and on-line at Shortbread.

Anne has a husband and dancing partner of over thirty years standing. Together they have created three gorgeous children and welcomed a lovely grandson.

The Canadian publisher, MuseItUp brought out two of Anne’s books in 2013 and are publishing a third, set in London 1822, this spring.

Although devoted to her Heroines (bright and articulate) and Heroes (handsome with a touch of arrogance), Anne enjoys the creation of a good and believable villain. The course of true love should be troubled until the last couple of pages, Anne feels, and a strong antagonist is so helpful in achieving that.

Amazon Author Page

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Christmas Presents: Curiosity killed the cat

Christmas presents are much on my mind at present as I try to source my DH’s heart’s desire, remember which books I bought for the family last year and sort out who likes what sweets/chocolate/Italian biccies…

I keep remembering a small incident from childhood and I thought I’d share it. It’s that time of year and I’m, you know, generous to a fault. 

Our church was a bus ride away. We had no car. One year some of the household went off to the Midnight service and my brothers didn’t. This was why all the parcels lovingly wrapped and placed under the tree had been opened and carefully re-wrapped by the time we returned. As all the sellotape had already been used, the paper was stuck together with flour and water paste.

Some of you will know flour and water paste has a noble history. In parts of Scotland it was used to hang wall-paper. So while curiosity may have killed one or two cats, satisfaction, and a little flour and water, brought them back.

Any similar smiles from your Christmas past?