Not the August Bank Holiday Offer~ oops!

Red-faced here.

The post ran thus:

“In the UK, there are two August bank holidays. One at the start of the month (first Monday) and one at the end. We look forward to them despite the fact that quite often, the weather is terrible. There’s a theory that making a day a bank holiday invites unseasonably bad weather.

Anyway, I’ve put Away With The Fairies at a lower price WORLD WIDE until Tuesday morning, so grab it while it’s an even better deal than usual. None of my books are priced unreasonably; you can’t buy a posh cup of coffee for the same price.

I’ve put the UK link here but for anywhere else in the world, just go into the URL and change the dot co dot uk to whichever internet suffix your country might use.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-Fairies-Vivienne-Tuffnell-ebook/dp/B005RDS02A/ref=la_B00766135C_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438337316&sr=1-3

 

P.S. Reviews always welcome.

P.P.S Enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend, whatever the weather”

Except I’ve had a total brain fart. There ARE two August Bank Holidays; however, they are not country wide. Scotland gets the first Monday and the rest of the UK gets the final one.

May does indeed have TWO Bank Holidays but August doesn’t.

Still, I shall leave the book on offer for the weekend and perhaps repeat it at the end of the month.

I’m an idjit.

The Longest Barrow

The Longest Barrow

The fairies have reclaimed this place

of oak and ash and thorn,

Tentatively taking the mounded earth

Where once the railway ran,

Now stripped of iron and engines

That once drove the Old Ones away.

An immense long barrow it is now,

Holding the forgotten land within,

an England that hides, left behind by time

But never lost and only hidden.

Straighter than nature’s rules allow,

This ridge splits unfamiliar crops;

I swear the fairies came to greet

The rows of roses, an ordered army,

Serried rank on rank without a bloom,

Bred for nameless gardens.

Perhaps when each is dug, encased in pot

Ready for the eager gardener’s hands,

Unseen stowaways may hitch a ride

And recolonise this land with fay.

“For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” The Stolen Child ~ on why we need retreats.

“For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” The Stolen Child ~ on why we need retreats.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about how baffling I find life lately. I suspect the plethora of medical issues may be having a hand in it but more and more often I find myself feeling (excuse my French here) I just can’t be arsed any more with modern life. I value very highly the comfort of our twenty first century life and the incredible medical facilities and the delights of technology. They make life a good deal easier in practical ways than we would credit and yet, recently, with the news concerning Syria and a number of worldwide news issues, I’ve begun to feel like running away.

On Twitter I have set things up so that potentially dodgy pictures don’t immediately appear when I click on a picture link, but it seems that this is set to screen out nudity and adult language. I discovered this the hard way when I clicked on a retweeted link and found an image so graphic (of a murder victim) I recoiled and was seriously disturbed. I checked who had retweeted it and found that they no longer followed me so I had no compunction in cutting them loose.

But the thought remains that there is too much of the sadness, badness and madness of the world that is intruding into my world. I’ve never advocated the so-called Ostrich approach, or of sticking my fingers in my ears and saying loudly, “Lalalala I’m not listening.” The impulse to withdraw is growing and I sense by touching those filaments that connect me to others that it’s the same feeling for many. It’s all getting a little much for us, this life, this bombardment of harshness and the perception that we are powerless, and while running away (nota bene: there is no AWAY) is seductive, it’s not the answer.

I’d like to share a favourite poem, one by Yeats whose connection to the mystical of his native Ireland resonates strongly with me:

The Stolen Child by W. B Yeats:

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we’ve hid our faery vats,

Full of berrys

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,

The bright, but solemn eyed –

He’ll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest

For he comes, the human child

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand

From a world more full of weeping than he can understand

“For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

Indeed it is. If someone had told me as a child, in terms I could understand, just how much weeping there is in this world, I might have drowned in those tears.

In my novel Away With The Fairies, the main character Isobel withdraws, goes away from her family to seek solitude and to try to come to some sort of terms with the deaths of her parents. But Isobel is an adult, with responsibilities and duties and it’s far from easy for her to carve out time and space for her mourning and it’s only down to the unexpected internal crisis that is triggered when she hits a deer driving home that she’s able to take that time. Her family in the end are the ones who arrange for her to have that time.

For most of us, a retreat may be seen as a luxury, or even as a running away from reality and yet I wonder now how many of you reading now are thinking with some longing of such an experience, a week or a month somewhere away from your usual life. In Yeats’ poem the fairies seduce away a child from his normal life, offering carefree play and sweet foods and a promise of no more tears.

We are not children to be stolen away by fairies, but adults who can seek respite from the sometimes heart and back breaking relentless onslaught of the world’s weeping. Imagine if you will the mother of that stolen child, imagine the impact the disappearance of a loved one would have on the family, and also on the world. Who knows what work that child was to have had in the world, what difference they might have made to matters small or large? This, then, is why time out is important, to refresh and renew the tired spirit and restore aching hearts before returning to take our places in trying to stem the flow of tears with kindness and support, and make the world a place less full of weeping than it might otherwise be.

(for Suzie Grogan, thanking you for your kindness on Thursday. I shall be trying to find some kind of retreat when I can.)

Fairies at the bottom of your garden?

You all know I believe in fairies and I’m not the only one, but it seems that one believer wanted to see how much remains on fairy folklore in the UK today. Even though the whole thing was later admitted as a hoax, the creator of this had interesting reasons for doing so and ones that made me smile.

Do check out the hoax reveal story, for his reasons and pictures of his fake dead fairy.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/supernatural/deadfairy.asp

and then if you haven’t already, perhaps have a look at the blurb on my novel Away With The Fairies also available in the US

 

Even though this was a hoax to me it does cheer me that there are still a great deal of people who want to believe in fairies.

Devas, fairies, and the unseen worlds ~ why there are more things than we ever dream of

Devas, fairies, and the unseen worlds ~ why there are more things than we ever dream of

I’m a mass of contradictions, me. Like Lewis Caroll, I can believe ten impossible things before breakfast and not think it strange, and yet, some things I simply cannot accept. Of all the disciples of Jesus I most identify with, I think Thomas is the closest to my heart. Dear old Doubting Thomas, who demanded to put his hands in Christ’s wounds before he could fully believe in the resurrection. I’m like that; I have to experience certain things before I can accept them. So for all my scepticism, there are things that I believe in that mark me out as one of the fruit-loop brigade. I have enough crystals to set up a business, and while I cannot begin to explain why, I know that using them has had benefits for my health. You may dismiss it as placebo, or something as simple as appreciating them for their intrinsic beauty, but I’ve always found something uplifting, soothing, calming or energising about certain rocks. I can’t explain it, nor can I really justify it, and I’d be very hesitant about attempting to offer the kind of recommendations I see and hear of crystal healers giving. The complex pseudo-scientific rationales about how crystals work actually annoy me.

The same goes for stuff like fairies. I know damn well I must appear crazy to believe in the existence of otherworldly beings, Tinkerbells and the flower fairies, not to mention things like angels and elves, and dryads and the rest. And yet, crazy or not, I think they are real and on occasions interact with humans. I’ve seen and experienced things I cannot dismiss as tricks of the light, visual disturbances, psychotic hallucinations and the products of a vivid imagination.

But I still have no explanation for what these beings are, what they history is and where they come from. I could waffle on about many dimensions, space-time continuums, parallel universes and the like but it would be pointless. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that when I have aimed to work with these unseen beings, things flow in an almost magical way. Gardens bloom with greater vigour, and my home has had an atmosphere of welcome and kindness that people notice the moment they walk in. There is a school of thought that calls the beings that work with the natural world Devas, a Sanskrit word meaning shining ones and the depictions of them correspond to the occasional glimpses I have had. The Victorian idea of flower fairies being pretty winged children of minute size does somehow diminish them, in my view. Devas can be any size they choose to be; in fact I don’t think size has any meaning.

Isobel in Away With The Fairies found that the unseen beings around her became more insistent that she pay attention to them. In her isolated holiday cottage, where the modern world intruded less into her life, she was plagued by odd events. Doors refusing to stay closed, even unlocking themselves, small items of value vanishing and then reappearing where she’d looked ten times, strange fairy gifts of woven twigs and leaves appearing and disappearing; scary and unsettling sounds, electricity faltering and failing.  Her sense of self had been vanishing, her unique identity being eroded by the mundane grind of living a life that wasn’t fully authentic to her creative self. I’ve found the same. So I’ve decided to start paying more heed to them. That’s not to say you can cart me off to the funny farm just yet. In my defence, every year there are discoveries made that overturn previously cast-iron theories. Science is constantly obliged to re-evaluate itself. There are far more things in this amazing world of ours than we knew about even ten years ago. Who is to say that what we know in another ten years will not supersede even that?

My gift to myself this weekend, using hoarded birthday money was this pendant of a deva, in silver, to remind myself that there truly are things beyond imagining, and to re-connect with my own experiences of such things. I may be mad, but I think I am harmless. I’m going to start accepting that my experiences are real, and that there truly are other beings, composed of quite different material to us, dipping in and out of this world, and which wish to work with us and not against us.

Interview with Isobel Trelawny ~ Star of Away With The Fairies

Interview with Isobel..

 

As a writer, I meet some extraordinary people in the course of my work and I get to write their stories for them. Of all the people who have appeared in my books, Isobel Trelawny, whom you may know from Away With The Fairies, has appeared in more tales than anyone else. She’s played best supporting actress in several but she’s the star of Away With The Fairies and today she’s agreed to sit down with me and have a bit of a chat. We’ve got the coffee, but instead of Isobel’s favourite biscuits, (chocolate Hob-Nobs), I’ve only been able to find some ginger snaps.

 

Viv: I hope the biscuits aren’t too much of a let down.

Isobel (laughing; she does this quite a bit). That’s OK, I’m cool with ginger biccies.

Viv: I’m glad to hear that! Anyway, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.

Isobel: It’s a pleasure. Gets me a bit of space in my day, to be honest.

Viv: I gather that can be quite a problem, yes?

Isobel: Well, I know your family is grown up now, but I’m sure you remember how much hard work small children are. Miranda, my oldest, is alarmingly bright and I have to be up to the mark all the time. Luke’s much more laid-back about life. And simply finding the mental space to day dream rather than doing things all the time is really hard. I’m often so knackered by the time the kids are in bed, I really don’t have the energy to paint, or even think.

Viv: You weren’t sure you’d be able to have kids, as I recall?

Isobel: True, which makes me feel guilty about whinging about them when I do. I had a series of miscarriages when Mickey and I first got married. There wasn’t an explanation; there was nothing wrong, as far as the quacks could see. I just kept losing them early on. Then some years later, I woke up one morning not only knowing I was pregnant but also being fairly sure this one would go to term.

Viv: Your parents died when you were pregnant with Luke. How did that affect you?

Isobel (laughing again) You know damn well how it affected me! OK, well, I was shocked and then I was angry. I’d not had a good relationship with them, to be honest. I felt (and I had good evidence about this) that they neither of them approved of me and my life choices very much. I was just at the point in my life when I felt it might be possible for them to start approving of me when they killed themselves. I don’t think anyone really knows how they truly feel about their parents till they’re gone. I certainly didn’t. I didn’t know how ill they both had been. I’d kept them at arms’ length for years, avoiding anything that might bring out any emotional reaction. And when they were gone, suddenly, like that, I couldn’t process it. I was heavily pregnant and people kept telling me to relax and not get upset and so on. Oh and “Think of the baby!” So it was a while later before I could start to even think about it all. By then, you see, people assume you’ve done your grieving and you’re tickety-boo. But I wasn’t. Far from it. I was pretty much at breaking point and yet, I simply didn’t know it. It was killing that deer with the car that was the tipping point that meant I couldn’t go on pretending any longer.

Viv: I know. Since the events of Away With The Fairies, you’ve had some more tough things to deal with, so it does seem a long, and ongoing process.

Isobel: I think what’s gone on since then has been long overdue. I’ve got a streak of wildness that I thought I had under control but it seems not. I’ve always soared from extremes to extremes but never quite as devastatingly as this. 

Viv: Now, your husband Mickey is a clergyman. Looking at you, you seem a long way from any clergy wife of popular but horribly dated sterotypes.  (Isobel has henna’d hair, wears ripped and paint smeared jeans, and a rather wonderful amber necklace that matches her eyes. She talks very fast and with a lot of hand gestures; she’s a comfortable person to be around but she’s not prim and certainly not proper) How much impact does his job have on you?

Isobel: Too much, sometimes. The doorbell and the phone never stop bloody ringing. Oh don’t get me wrong, generally, the vast majority of folks aren’t a problem, but once in a while, I get people making a big deal of the fact that I don’t do anything in church. I don’t get involved in groups or lead anything. The fact that I turn up at all is a miracle some times. My best friend Chloe is a very rare sight in any church, and her husband and Mickey trained together.

Viv: I’ve met Chloe too. Given what she went through at college, I’m not surprised.

Isobel: I feel mildly guilty at times about that. The events of her final year at the vicar factory which ended with her breaking her leg every which way but Sunday were partly down to me. My wild, rebellious streak got out of hand and poor Chloe was the one who got hurt badly. I don’t think she’s ever blamed me, but I do sometimes blame myself.

Viv: I’m sorry to hear it. I know the story and I think whatever you and Chloe had done, it would have ended badly. Possibly worse.  Now, you were able to buy a small place in the country where you could paint. I’m having trouble with my writing and I’d love to spend some time at your cottage. Is it really so spooky as you said?

Isobel: It can be scary, which might be me understating it rather a lot. But it rather depends what baggage you go with. My friend Antony spent some time there a while ago. But apart from stopping his mobile phone working, nothing happened that time. More recently, he stayed, and some deep issues he’d not been able to deal with began to surface. It’s one of those places that has a foot in both realms. In the ordinary, everyday world, it’s a slightly run down, rather picturesque hideaway. But it’s also a place that stands on the edge of the other world, the world of beings that we seldom interact with, and that can be tough to deal with.

Viv: You’re talking about the fairies now? 

Isobel: (grinning now) I suppose I am!

Viv: You’re a pretty pragmatic sort of person from what I know of you, and you’re not at all one of these New Age believe-anything women. So, far as I can see, you’re not the most likely candidate for getting caught up with the whole concept of fairies. Can you tell me what they’re like?

Isobel: I can tell you what they’re not. They’re not anything like what you see in modern depictions of fairies. There’s no glitter or pretty-pretty faces. None of the sparkly magic and so on you see in both kids’ books and the New Age ones you referred to. They’re…..well, primeval is the only word I can think of. Earthy. They’re not what you think and they’re not what you expect. I’m not even convinced I understand them myself. 

Viv: OK, and that brings me to a hard question. How does any of what you experienced in the cottage square with your faith?

Isobel: That IS a hard question. I’m not sure how to answer it. Churchianity tries to give nice neat answers to life’s tough questions and it gets cross and burns people at the stake for refusing to accept those neat answers as all that there is. I don’t believe we can know all the answers, but that we have to keep asking the questions anyway, even after we think we know the answers. Certain branches of Churchianity would tell me that my parents are burning in hell for committing suicide, that by that one act after two good, caring lives they damned themselves forever. And yet, I came to see that their deaths were possibly the most noble things they’d ever done.

Viv: Churchianity? I like that term!

Isobel: So do I. The thing is, God is not bound by human rules and that sadly is what many churches have sought to do: bind God by their rules. That’s like trying to cage the air, and make it obey your rules. Anyway, enough God-talk.

(She’s looking a bit uncomfortable about this, so I think it’s time to move the conversation to something else.)

Viv: OK, so tell me about your painting, your art?

Isobel: That’s tough. Hmm. Let me think. OK, I don’t have your way with words, but I think I paint my stories. You write yours, but I have to paint them. I paint the things I see and I feel inside my head, and I try to use that to tell the greater narrative of life. I can only paint a tiny section of it and hope that it adds to the greater picture somewhere.

Viv: I certainly feel you succeed with it, as much as any of us can. Anyway, can you sum up for us your experiences?

Isobel: You do go for asking the tough questions! I’ll try. Hmmm. Perhaps it’s best to say that there are more things that we don’t know that that we do, and to be open-minded about the world and not get bogged down with dogmatic answers to life’s big questions. Oh and love your family with all your strength. That’s something too easy to forget, that the love you share with family and friends is not an automatic right that’ll be there forever. People die and they don’t always give you any warning of it. So tell those you love that you love them. I never got a chance to tell my mum and dad I loved them until they were gone. Don’t make my mistake.

Viv: Thank you very much indeed, Isobel. I’d like to wish you luck with your continued exploration of the world through your art.

Isobel: It’s a pleasure. Now, do you think we can sneak off for a glass of wine somewhere? I’m parched!

Viv: Sure, but you’re buying!

 

Amazon US

http://www.amazon.com/Away-With-The-Fairies-ebook/dp/B005RDS02A/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1318763160&sr=1-2

 

Amazon UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-With-The-Fairies-ebook/dp/B005RDS02A/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318763071&sr=1-3

 

Lulu paperback (will be on both Amazon sites in time)

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/away-with-the-fairies/17985792

(The events with Chloe will be appearing in a new book this year, titled, Square Peg. From the title I suspect you can guess that one of the themes is not fitting in and being uncomfortable about it. I’ll let you know when it’s ready. Many of the characters in my books appear or connect with other characters in other books, so you can often meet new people and familiar ones in surprising places.)

Why I believe in fairies

I believe in fairies ~ just don’t ask me to define what a fairy actually is!

(this article has appeared before but as a guest post. Do forgive me; I’m not lazy, but rather bogged down with depression at the moment.)

Most children stop believing in fairies somewhere in their tweens, if not beforehand. It’s a charming belief like Father Christmas that adults usually encourage them to hang on to but are never surprised when they finally declare in that argument-defying tone, “There’s no such thing!” I suspect I was no different, though my personal belief in Father Christmas persisted a little longer due to an incident involving bells, the interconnecting chimney system in the Victorian house I grew up in and my father’s attempt to wrap an impossibly shaped toy. I’ve long been involved in the supernatural; a diocesan exorcist or two have been among my close personal friends and I’ve experienced many things that would make the researchers of Britain’s Most Haunted lick their lips in glee. But fairies? Come on, now, flower fairies with gossamer wings? Tinkerbell? I returned to a belief in fairies some time in 1997, when we lived in an isolated rectory at the edge of the Norfolk fens. Items of small worth but immediate need kept going missing and reappearing in improbable places, often where several of us had looked numerous times before. Glasses, jewellery, keys, precious little things all vanished into thin air. My husband or my daughter or I would storm around the house hunting for the missing item, getting more and more stressed about it. Having coffee with a friend and neighbour Sam, I mentioned this and she let out a full throated chuckle of a laugh. “It’s the fairies,” she said and I spilled my coffee and spluttered with disbelief. To my shock she detailed the things that happened, the kind of things that went missing and where they tended to turn up. Half convinced, I asked what I could do about it. “Not a lot, really,” she said. “I find leaving them sugar and the occasional glass of something sweet and alcoholic helps. They tend to return things quicker if you ask politely. And sometimes they give you things.” After this I tuned up my inner vision and I did start to sense presences, around me. Most of them were in the garden which we’d cultivated as a traditional cottage garden filled with old fashioned scented plants, but some liked the house. They liked my collection of stones, polished gemstones and crystals; these were my most commonly borrowed items. They liked my house plants and the small grove of large leaved plants that I had in the larger of the reception rooms. So, still a little sceptical, I tried working with them, and to my surprise I found that the garden grew better and the house felt happier. Things still moved around but I didn’t worry too much. Even when car keys vanished when I needed them, I tried to stay polite and eventually they were returned. Of course, the big question is what ARE fairies? There are a number of possible options. They may be nature spirits, of the type termed devas, which work with the natural world to keep things going smoothly. In some theologies, they are the spawn of fallen angels and are to be mistrusted and shunned; these are the kind that stole children and replaced them with changelings. They may be disembodied spirits, those of the dead or those not yet born. Or one theory is that in antiquity they were a pygmy race of humans driven to the margins and subsisting by stealing from us. This last theory is somewhat borne out by the discovery some years back of a miniature race of humans on the island of Flores; nicknamed the Hobbit, these tiny folks, now extinct, would have lived at the same time as modern humans. And of course, for some, they may just be a figment of the imagination, the product of a deranged mind, a sustained hallucination. We use the term “away with the fairies” to denote someone has lost touch with ordinary reality and is on a trip of some sort. It’s a kinder way of saying someone is a bit mad. It’s also the title of my most recent book. “Away with the Fairies” is the tale of artist Isobel, trying to carve out time and space from busy family life to pursue her career as a painter. Isobel has endured tragedy and hardship but has brushed all these under the carpet in the need to get on with everyday life. But none of these things have really gone away, and her life unravels spectacularly when she hits a deer driving home. Sequestered at their isolated holiday cottage, Isobel notices odd things happening, small things appearing and disappearing and doors and windows refusing to stay shut. Dismissing it as nothing at first, she becomes immersed more and more deeply in the cycle of visionary paintings she has begun until the strange events become impossible to ignore. That’s when she gets scared….. My own experiences always tend to influence my books, so finding fairies in a story wasn’t that great a surprise, though the conclusion I come to in the book was a bit of a shock to me. That is one of the great joys in writing, that finding of secrets you didn’t know you knew.   “Away With The Fairies” is available as an e-book from Amazon USA : http://www.amazon.com/Away-With-The-Fairies-ebook/dp/B005RDS02A/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1318763160&sr=1-2   From Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-With-The-Fairies-ebook/dp/B005RDS02A/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318763071&sr=1-3   And currently as a paperback from Lulu, (though in a few weeks time it will also be available from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-Fairies-Vivienne-Tuffnell/dp/1470923416/ref=la_B00766135C_1_2_bnp_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422703517&sr=1-2 ) http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/away-with-the-fairies/17985792   It is also available at Amazon France, and Amazon Germany etc but I haven’t put up the links from those places as I can’t imagine it selling in either country.   Isobel’s a sceptic, as I suspect most people are, but she learns that there are far more things in the world that she never imagined could exist…….

Miranda the fairy

Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!

Today I have been given a guest slot over at Barb’s, so go and read more about fairies over there. Wonder how many of you then realise you’ve got them in your house or garden after reading this:

http://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/i-believe-in-fairies-just-dont-ask-me-to-define-what-a-fairy-actually-is-guest-post-by-vivienne-tuffnell/

Announcing my new baby ~ Introducing Away With The Fairies

Announcing my new baby ~ Introducing Away With The Fairies

I’ve been away for a fortnight on holiday (more of that soon) but the day before we headed off, I hit the publish button for my new book. I’ve had limited and sporadic internet access, not to mention not a lot of time to go online, and when I did try to write a blog post with my net-book, both WordPress and my net-book refused to play and only allowed me to post a photo. So this fanfare-and-trumpets post has had to wait till I got home again and had the time and the technology to write a suitable “press release” for it.

That said, the small amount of publicity I was able to give it has
resulted in sales, which made me grin like the Cheshire Cat.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to…..Away With The Fairies. Originally entitled Fish Out of Water, I wrote this novel
some years back and it was one that very nearly landed me a
publishing contract. It landed me an agent, too, who proved to stink
like rotting fish, metaphorically speaking and who threw me out of
the keeping net when he failed after a few tries to find a publisher
to take it on. Since I have changed the name, the fishing metaphors
need to be dropped…sorry, I could never resist a bad pun.

The following is the synopsis of the novel:

Irrepressible artist Isobel has survived most things. She’s coped with everything from a sequence of miscarriages, her husband’s ordination, the birth of two small and demanding children, and finally the recent death of both her parents in a bizarre suicide pact. She’s managed to bounce back from everything so far. A sequence of domestic disasters finally signals to Isobel that perhaps things aren’t
quite as rosy as she’d like. With her half of the inheritance,
Isobel buys an isolated holiday cottage where she hopes to be able to catch up with some painting, as well as have the occasional holiday.

The cottage is idyllic, beautiful and inspiring, but odd things keep
happening. Doors won’t stay shut, objects go missing and reappear
in the wrong places and footsteps are heard when there’s no one
there. One of Isobel’s new neighbours suggests that it is the
fairies who are responsible, but Isobel is more than a tad sceptical:
there’s not a hint of glitter or tinselly wings or magic wands.

Isobel’s inner turmoil begins to spill over into her daily life when she hits a deer while driving back from the cottage. Her family hold crisis
talks, deciding that she needs to have time alone in the cottage to
get over long repressed grief and to paint it out of her system. As
she works at frenetic pace, the odd happenings begin to increase
until even Isobel’s rational, sceptical mind has to sit up and take
notice. And that’s when she gets really scared. Up until now, her
motto has been that there’s nothing in life that can’t be made
better by a cup of tea and some Hob Nobs. This time it’s beginning
to look like it’ll take more than even chocolate biscuits to make
things better. 

I’ve long believed in the existence of fairies, but defining precisely
what I mean by fairies is hard. Beings that inhabit our world but are
not human is possibly the simplest definition and it encompasses all
the possibilities from a pygmy race of primitive humans (like the now
extinct Homo Floresiensis), to spirits of the dead and to the devas
that guard the natural world. Folk-lore and literature are packed
with stories and anecdotes about the fairies(also spelled faeries; I
chose the modern spelling deliberately to ensure I kept the story
firmly in this century) and like ghosts the subject divides people
between believers and sceptics. I’m cool with that.

Isobel is very close to my heart; in some respects she’s the me I’d like to have been: capable, rational, practical and pragmatic but with a streak of artistic madness that can drive her like a demon. She
played “best supporting actress” in another novel that pre-dates
this one, set when Isobel’s husband is at theological college and she
teams up with the rebellious Chloe to play merry hell with the staid
and bigoted wives at the college. She also appears in two other
novels as a pretty vital character, but Away With The Fairies is
Isobel’s own unique story.

The book is available right now from Amazon Kindle US, Amazon Kindle UK (also the Amazon sites for France and Germany but I can’t see it being a big seller in non-English speaking countries) and will be
available as a paperback from both Amazons in due course. It is
already on sale at Lulu, and will be listed on Amazon in due course.
Likewise it will be listed for Nook and in the iStore at some stage.
For those of you who do not possess a Kindle yet, it is possible to
download a Kindle app for your pc or Mac and then download a free
sample to read. My husband doesn’t yet have a Kindle but he uses
Kindle for pc and buys and reads books on his laptop.

Anyway, one final thing. The cover art was done by the very talented Andrew Meek whose book I will be reviewing soon. The image was suggested by our very own Wherearetheheroes, and he has a mention in the acknowledgements for reminding me of the very striking description of one of Isobel’s paintings. I am so very grateful to both you guys for your help and support.

Lost and Found

Last week, I lost my wedding ring. It’s not my real wedding ring which is too small to wear when my joints swell up with the occasional bout of arthritis, but one my husband bought me on our 20th wedding anniversary. It was made of fairtrade silver from Bali and had a central band of Celtic knots that spins independently of the rest of the ring. I’ve had a lot of entertainment from that ring (I’m a simple soul, really)

I searched high and low and even ended up cleaning into corners that had been untouched for months. Not a sign. But I found: the dog’s tennis ball, a couple of errant tubs of lipbalm belonging to various members of the household, a pendant I had bought as a birthday present for someone and then lost (it was under my printer!) an assortment of other small things and a lot of dust bunnies. I even emptied bins and the hoover, and the recycling bin.

I came to the conclusion that the faeries had nicked it. I know how silly this sounds to people who don’t believe in faeries, but my experience is that there are beings who are very playful and sometimes very naughty who move items in some houses. I’m not actually disorganised as such and I’m not untidy, but there have been times when things of vital use have vanished utterly from where all can confirm they were put and despite frantic searching, of every possible corner, pocket, bag, box and shelf, the item is not there. I once had my car keys vanish when I needed them urgently and having turned out my pockets repeatedly and tear the house apart, I found them an hour later…IN THE POCKET I HAD TURNED INSIDE OUT, in front of witnesses. The same happened with the candlestick from Cluedo; it turned up in the murder envelope, which had previously been empty of all but the 3 cards.

The house we had in Darkest Norfolk was especially prone to this sort of episode; it affected guests and inhabitants alike. That house had darker secrets I may write about another time, but it’s not for today.

I can’t express my relief to find the ring again nor my amusement at the means of recovery.

I was getting dressed after my usual shower, and I went into my undies drawer for clean underpinnings, and as I pulled out a pair of knickers, the ring seemingly materialised from inside them.

Well, where else do you return a wedding ring? It seems the faeries have a naughty sense of humour !