Blog Archive

Concatenation …

concatenation; plural noun: concatenations a series of interconnected things.

‘A series of interconnected things…’   If you’re a writer, it’s most likely that someone at some time has said: ‘It would be great as a series.’

And the truth is that many writers write copious series. Myself? I’ve written three series and am now in the middle of the fourth.

Why you may ask?

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SoS 7/7/21

Had a swift dash to the city to collect mail and make sure the little Matchbox was okay. And to pick up birthday presents. I dashed around the tiny garden, took five shots, and then in a bitterly cold Antarctic burst, drove back up the coast. No pics from here but tomorrow I will be planting rhubarb and purple asparagus and feeding the herbs.

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Icon…

Today, it is six years since my mother passed away.

Mum was a legend and I have cause to wonder what may have passed to me from her.

Mum was small, but tough.

Resilient, courageous, strong-minded, funny and whilst forthright with her family, intrinsically introverted. She hated society and being social. Simply, she preferred the company of her children, son in law and her grandchildren along with two of her closest and much loved friends.

We could trust her to be there for us always – with a hug, a word and most likely a homemade meal.

Always busy, it wasn’t for nothing that we called her our little Gurkha, our Durocell Bunny. Always beautifully presented, Mum was the personification of Carpe Diem. Seize the Day but always with hair done and lippy on.

Yes, so much to have learned from her and heights still to aim for.

I miss her…

Claire Isobel Wallace. 25/11/25 – 30/07/2016

SoS 24/7/21

I haven’t been around for awhile. It’s not that I haven’t been in the gardens, not at all. It’s just that my writerly work requires long hours at the screen and I couldn’t face blogging. It’s also difficult to load things where we live on the coast,  as our internet has slowed dramatically and mostly, I have to work off my phone. But happy with progress on the latest manuscript, and with a hot chocolate drink seasoned with marshmallows and Lindt chocolate shavings, I feel revived enough to post about the gardens.

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How does it feel?

I’m writing a new novel at the moment. It’s tentatively called Oak Gall and Gold and is Book Two of The Peregrinus Series. 

The series, like my others, is set in the twelfth century, and inevitably involves the machinations of the trading house of Gisborne ben Simon. This time, there’s an incomplete illuminated manuscript, a monk with no memory, and dealings with the Holy Roman Empire.

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To lust or not to lust…

I follow blogs completely separate from the writing world.

I write daily, my life is wrapped up in word construction, so I choose to follow blogs a million miles away from writing.

A little bit of embroidery, a little bit of gardening, a little bit of lifestyle.

There’s a lot of lust steaming out of the first two.

I follow gardening blogs because they allow me to dream of what I could do in my own gardens if muscles, ligaments, climate change and advancing age weren’t encroaching. The embroidery ones are to learn from, to gaze at. I know I will never reach such standards of excellence but that doesn’t matter. I’m always in awe of embroidery artists, their designs, and the depth of their practical know how.

But the lifestyle ones are something else…

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mybook.to/Sirventes PUBLISHED!

 

I’m excited to announce that the anthology, Sword and Sirventes, has just been released as an e-book. The paperback version will be released in the next fortnight.

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SoS 12/5/21

I reckon it’s quite hard to do SoS in the winter. There just doesn’t seem to much going on that’s of interest. Especially in our little Matchbox garden in the city which is resting, as any little hard worker should, until the busy blooming time of spring.

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A taster…

This is just a small taste of the opening pages of the novel, Reliquary, Book One of The Peregrinus Series, which I hope to e- and print-publish in the next few weeks.

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