To lust or not to lust…

July 17, 2021

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…

mybook.to/Sirventes PUBLISHED!

July 3, 2021

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.

A new release coming up!

June 26, 2021

‘A sequence of polished little gems that offer tantalizing keyholes to the past…’

SoS 12/5/21

June 12, 2021

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.

SoS 22/05/2

May 22, 2021

Very quick SoS today.

We’re in the city for a few days and the weather is astonishing – twenty degrees and the garden is so confused. And dry…

Reliquary – an author’s note…

May 22, 2021

The inspiration for my latest book, Reliquary, originally came from the research I carried out for the previous trilogy called The Triptych Chronicle. In the process of seeking facts on rare and valuable merchandise that may have been traded in the twelfth century, I came across mention of a silk called byssus and which is still harvested in the Mediterranean from a species of shellfish.

SoS 15/05

May 15, 2021

We’ve finally sunk into a true winter burst, with chilly temps and snow on the mountains. Whilst the snow will be gone by Monday, the cooler temperatures remind us that we need to consider frosts and planting seeds for spring. We’ve planted broad beans in the veggie garden (traditionally on Anzac Day April 25^th,here in Tasmania but we’ve planted as late as August) and begun to rest and feed the veggie garden. There’s always more for us to do in our garden in autumn/winter, I love it. Pruning, feeding, mulching, planting, planning – and so we’ve begun.

A Café Date…

May 14, 2021

This is one of those chatty posts, as though you and I might be sitting across a café table from each other and we are meeting for the first time. I’m drinking a cappuccino with a coffee macaron on the side. And you? You’re having a coffee as well? Excellent.

You want to know what I do?

Well…

‘Oh Christ! Oh Christ, the bairns…’

May 6, 2021

Over the years, I’ve often commented on how inspirational Dorothy Dunnett’s writing has been to me as I tread the path.

Once a couple of years ago, I was asked to write a piece for the Dorothy Dunnett Society’s august journal, Whispering Gallery, on the nature of shock or more particularly, what I found to be the most shocking piece of writing in Dunnett.

SoS 24/4/21

April 24, 2021

We’re back in our big garden on the coast after dallying in the city last week and I was happy to see the garden breathing again as temperatures drop and the nights have welcome dews. This garden suffers in summer, as I’ve mentioned before, and in order to try and create a more temperate micro-climate, we’ve slowly been filling the old orchard with trees of all sorts. Hopefully they’ll act as not just wind protection, but feedlots for birds and insects AND lower the overall summer temperature of the whole garden. Trouble is, it may not be in my life time. But that’s gardening, isn’t it? A measure of future-proofing?

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Tag: Prue Batten