Summer’s almost over and I’m just about ready for the temperatures to cool down and rains to start. After so many years of English summers of a week of 24C and then back to the usual grey and drizzle for the next two months, this one has been something else. I’d forgotten that Spanish summers are days of 40C and counting for three months solid. But on the flip side are the Spanish summer nights: terraces open on every corner serving food and drinks late into the night, local fiestas with music and dancing, and a contagious festive mood. Swings and roundabouts: days of sweltering and nights of exuberant joy.
Like elsewhere, this summer came to Spain with the painful gift of wildfires. It was bad. The morning I left for the South, the air in the capital was so bad it was hard to see clearly. My throat itched and my eyes stung. Fires raged on the outskirts of the capital and the scent of smoke permeated everything. Now, when I’m describing the aftermath of burning scenes in my books, I know exactly how it must feel. Worse still was to see the effects.
As many of you’ll know, the highlight of August for a lot of Europe was the total solar eclipse on the 12th. I took a bus out to El Tiemblo, in the centre of Spain, where one of my friends has a house I’ve been going to since I was at uni. I’ve sat on that terrace and watched the other side of the lake in all seasons, day and night.
This time, I arrived late, in the middle of the Perseid meteor shower. It was as ever: a black sky peppered with stars, absolute silence interrupted by rustlings and the occasional owl, and a chilled glass of wine to sip slowly. We sat on the terrace leaning back and counting shooting stars. It was magical but for the whiff of smoke in the air… till next morning when the devastation opposite became apparent. The fire, one of the largest ever suffered in Spain, destroyed more than 50,000 hectares in three days. It was heartbreaking to see the damage done to an area with such a rich ecosystem and miraculous that the house survived intact.
The next day we drove out to see the eclipse, which we saw in a little village, so small it only had one bar with just beers on offer. We followed the locals out into a field and sat on chopped straw as the world went dark, paused, and then lit up again. I’d seen total eclipses before: when I was a child in Australia and then again a few years ago in Wyoming. But this one, sitting in a field with a warm beer and two good friends, had its own beauty, followed up by the peak of the Perseids that night. Our deal was that we couldn’t go to bed unless we’d seen three shooting stars. That night, we saw triple that!
I’ll now address the elephant in the room: the print version of Rule of Reason. It’s taken a little longer than planned due to tech issues with the cover files. But you’ll be glad to know they’ve all been sorted by the wonderful Fakel of Stardust Book Services, who’s the artist behind my covers for this series. Yesterday, I received the first print copy of the international edition for review. It’s just great! I’m waiting on the hardback and the UK editions. The release date is set for the 10th of September and on track!
In my last newsletter I mentioned the Milford Critique week that I’m attending this September. I had to find something that was a maximum of 10,000 words to send. I went back and forth a lot and finally chose a short story called ‘Size matters, Not’. It’s part of the trove of short stories, novelettes, and novellas related to the Hand of Reason. The main character is Golfen, whom you know from Touched by Light. Why did I choose that? Mainly because I wanted to see if it can stand alone (those attending Milford probably won’t know anything about the Hand of Reason) and also because there are such few adult fantasy tales where the main character is a dwarf or a halfling (yes, yes, yes, I do know about Hobbits). And I also wanted to give Golfen his own time to shine!
I took a long time in deciding the title and had a lot of worthy candidates, but think I chose the right one, but we’ll see. Perhaps the title will be critiqued too!
What else?
The BFS publishes the profile of one of its members every Friday. It was my turn last week, which was very exciting. Writing out my profile was a great exercise of reflection on how I’ve ended up here. And by ‘here’ I mean making up worlds and characters who’ve gone on and taken up lives of their own.
My Grandmother was a writer. We called her Pinky. Her study was like a cave of wonders filled with books. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Tolkien when I was about eight. I was a voracious reader before that and went on after. I did read a lot of fantasy but like many, ‘I grew out of it’ and became a sophisticate that only read classics, fiction in translation, and noir. That lasted till my late 20s when I was trying to cement a relationship with my much younger brothers. They insisted I had to read The Deathgate Cycle, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It’s a fabulous series with a very profound understory and a bunch of morally grey characters. I never looked back. Pinky’s not here anymore so I can’t thank her, but I did send Margaret Weis an email thanking her for leading me back to fantasy. Her reply is double-saved!
I think Pinky had a lot to do with my becoming, not only a writer, but the kind of writer I am: indie by active choice. She was born in Chile and wrote longhand in the 40s and 50s in copybooks. Her husband didn’t like her writing and when she went on a trip abroad (as a chaperone for a group of schoolgirls) he burnt her manuscripts. All of them. On her return, she didn’t bow, give up, or put away the pen. She re-wrote everything all over again from memory and went on to publish her work.
Her first book is an absurdist fantastical selection of novella and short stories called Letters to a Thief. The main novella of that name is a series of exchanges between an author and a man who’s stolen her stories and let the characters go. Upset and lost without their author, the characters wander and get into terrible situations as they’re manipulated by the thief. She initially presented the manuscript for publication under a male pseudonym – initials and a surname taken from the Basque town her mother’s family came from. Later, the year I was born, she put her own name on the book. I don’t know how she came to do that and I kick myself for not asking the question when I could.
She published with big presses and with small ones in Chile. And many years later, when she veered into poetry which nobody wanted to publish, she set up her own company and published her poems herself – a very early precursor to indie publishing. She was brave and resilient, ahead of her time, and wrote without caring whether she’d be a bestseller.
In the first few lines of Letters to a Thief, she tries to explain how the loss of her stories came about and says, ‘…the ultimate reason is because I write, and I write because I was born.’ I feel that.
I have a copy of her first manuscript and when I did an idle search online I came across an edition of that first book which I’d never seen. I bought it. Her handwriting on the first page made me cry. She would have been so happy that I ended up ‘here’. Actually, she probably would’ve said, ‘Duh. I told you this was what you were meant to do…’
So, what’s been going on that’s not writing related?
I’ve seen a lot of films and mostly liked them. Of course I had some quibbles with all of them, but given that they gave me a couple of hours of enjoyment, I’m happy. The Odyssey was great. I particularly liked Odysseus’s realisation of what the whole Troy war meant. I do like my characters facing the consequences of their actions, even if only in their minds. I enjoyed The End of Oak Street – I mean who doesn’t like dinosaurs in suburbia?! And on a whim, in honour of my brothers’ childhood love of He-man and Skeletor, I watched Masters of the Universe. I laughed out loud throughout. I love a film that knows it’s bad and wallows in its badness knowingly.
Reading has been varied. I read Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I loved it. Ending my horror theme for a while, I ready yet another Grady Hendrix: We Sold our Souls, about aging hard rock/metal stars that never quite made it. Like all his books, the MC is a very well written woman.
And, with an element of heartbreak, I’ve been reading my own book, Touched by Light, aloud to my father. I’m in Austin visiting my parents at the moment and found the hardback by him on the sofa. When I asked where he’d got to, he replied that just after the World War 1 part… I write fantasy. Straight fantasy. Not historical. So… I started from the beginning.
And finally, Echo!
She’s had a good summer. The two weeks in the south were great. She loved having a garden to race round. The pool was a mix. Every time anyone went in, she immediately went into saviour mode and tried to fish them out. They were all obviously drowning and the rest of us were daft not to realise. It was a miracle she didn’t fall in! It took me back to when she was a pup – about eight or nine months, so bigger than a labrador. She leaned over to outstare a duck on one of the Hampstead Heath ponds and fell headfirst. Guess who had to climb in to fish HER out? You’d think she’d have learnt, but no, a few weeks later, she fell through the ice on another of the ponds. Again, it was my job to fish out a bedraggled Dane and squelch myself, shivering, back home!
Back in Madrid, she’s relishing being the neighbourhood dog again and the lowered temperatures, which mean longer walks!
To close off, just a reminder that Rule of Reason will be available to buy on 10 September. In the UK, you can order through Waterstones and through your preferred bookshop. If you’re an e-reader, it’s on Kindle. In the US and Canada, you can get through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and even ask for it to be ordered through your favourite bookshop.
My formatter is doing the e-book formatting for A Meeting of Minds and for A Daughter’s Duty. The first is the novella that goes with Rule of Reason. I’ll send it through to everyone on my newsletter in mid to late October to tie you over till Book 3 comes out. About that time, I’ll send a reminder offering A Daughter’s Duty to those who want it. It’s shorter – more novelette than novella, and is a retelling of one of the last chapters of Rule of Reason from the point of view of Anil of Belu and Flyte, daughter of the High Luk of Mehru and leader of the resisting army throughout the siege of Lis. It tells what’s been going on behind the walls. Obviously, it’ll only be of interest to someone who’s read Rule of Reason. Otherwise, it’ll just be a bunch of spoilers.
On that note, I leave you in peace for another month.
Keep reading. And please, pretty please, leave me a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you get books! Reviews make a huge difference to any writer, even more to an indie like me!
Stay safe.