What a year!
What a year it has been!
In so many ways…
Personally, a difficult year as my family faced the loss of their beloved matriarch and then in quick succession, my husband’s duel with a major illness and my own ongoing journey through inner ear issues with permanent loss of balance. But OH and I are still here and plan on taking something wonderful from each day – it’s a modus operandi that has always stood us in good stead and is/was my mother’s attitude to life. She made it to 89 and ¾’s, so it has much to recommend it.
Once again on a private level, but to do with my business life – I released Tobias in early August of this year, the eighth book of my list. Number 8!!!! Crikey!
Tobias plumbed the depths of my very soul. He’s the archetype for my best imaginary friend. I love him, I love his flagrant honesty, his weaknesses and his strengths and I thank all those readers who took that violent journey from Venice to Constantinople and back with him. I have been repeatedly asked if he will surface in any other books, and I can say that as long as Gisborne keeps his mercantile and spy network flourishing at the end of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth, then yes, Tobias may well be there, if he is cautious and keeps out of the dark alleys and dangerous ways of felons.
I’ve also released two e-short stories at the perma-price of 99 cents on Amazon for those who want a quick read.
The Moonlady and The Orchard of Chance are unashamedly connected to the fantasy quartet, The Chronicles of Eirie, and were fun to write and made me realise that I miss writing fantasy.
The Orchard of Chance was originally written for Bopress Miniature Books in the USA and with whom I have an ongoing collaboration. The miniature version is highly valued by collectors and I am always delighted when I know someone has ordered a bespoke edition.
But another huge step in the life of Prue Batten – Writer, was to begin the steps to take my list back to print. Currently, the trilogy of The Gisborne Saga is now in print and available at many online retailers. I hope to bring the fantasy quartet, The Chronicles of Eirie, back into print in 2016.
Also on a private and business level, my husband and I invested in the Southeast Irrigation Scheme here in Tasmania, and have had massive machinery extending our dams and laying pipes at the farm.
As the El Ninõ pattern grips us in its cracklingly dry embrace, it’s a wonder to watch a spray of sparkling water arc across the green crop for our lambs. The system is a wonderful safety net for farmers and we hope to farm lucerne and oats for the market, as well as oats and rape for our own sheep.
So it’s been a super busy year.
Summer is sacrosanct for me. I write every day whenever I can – a paragraph here, five hundred words there – and slowly a novel builds. But I also thrive on the sea and you can bet your sweet bippy I’ll be at the beach swimming, and hopefully, weather pending, on our boat.
There will be pictures through the blog, I assure you! And some reflections on life, the universe and everything. I have a super interview with rising star, Matthew Harffy, coming up in early January and I am hoping to follow this with other interviews with stellar authors and in fact stellar people in general!
It merely remains for me to say to everyone I have met this year that I value your support of me as a writer and also as a friend. It’s your heartfelt kindness through our tough times that has sustained me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And in particular, I need to thank those who worked with me as a team: Clare Batten, my intuitive cover designer and print formatter, John Hudpsith, my most valued editor and friend, Daniel Gillan, my super fast e-formatter and Kim Maisch, my most excellent web-designer. And lastly but perhaps most importantly, my manager and agent, my husband. His strength, knowledge, understanding and patience is the stuff of his very own ‘chanson de geste.’
Here’s to 2016 and to presenting you all with Book Two in The Triptych Chronicle – Guillaume. (Hopefully end July).
Onward and upward and Season’s Greetings to all!
Oh Prue, I didn’t realise your beloved had been unwell this year too. It really has been ahell of a year for you. I have enjoyed out friendship ans know it will continue. I also loved The Gisbourne Trilogy but confess I think I love Tobias more 🙂 hoping 2016 is a better year for you and the family xxx
I think we all always have one or two years in our lives that we don’t want to repeat, Libby, don’t we. This is ours. But then I have to look at the good side – I published Tobias, I contributed a short article to Whispering Gallery – the Dorothy Dunnett Society’s journal, we had some very special times away, we’ve had House to retreat to in solitude and healing and we have the craziest dog who makes us laugh and laugh and then crawls onto the bed and hugs us!
PS: I THINK I love Tobias the most too!