An Odd Time

I always find November an odd month and, as it's just round the corner, I'm in that place again. The summer months are gone, as a busy mum I'm settled back into the routine of the children at school, the homework and all the clubs and sports they attend during term time.

As we've seen through the havoc caused by Sandy on the US East Coast, the weather has slipped into wet, cold, windy months. We're being warned of gale force winds and heavy rain to hit us tonight, though it's put into perspective by the scale of Sandy and the destruction she's causing.

Thoughts have started to turn to Christmas but the excitement isn't there for it yet. For parents it's that stage where the children are starting to think about lists and you're worrying about how to keep them at a manageable level. It will be weeks before the lights and decorations go up and the house starts to feel festive. I enjoy Christmas, especially the excitement the children feel in the build up to it. This year we are having family from England coming to stay with us, bringing two more young children with them so I have a bit more planning to do but we are looking forward to spending the holiday with them and their visit adds to our enthusiasm. Until then we have November. A month when we feel the effect of the clocks turning back, with long nights and colder weather, a month of expenditure and planning for parents and I end up looking back to summer or forward to Christmas.

If we had an American-style Thanksgiving Holiday to look forward to in November would it lift this in-between month or would it just be another burden to plan for?

So, here's a post that looks back to a day at Murlough Beach in Dundrum, before I gather the energy to start the work towards Christmas and my next goal of editing The Glass House in the hope of seeking an agent for it in the new year.

The dogs in these pictures are mine and this post gives me an opportunity to promote the rescue of abandoned and unwanted pets. Both our dogs came from rescue situations. Our lab/staffy cross ended up in a pound after being found as a stray with no microchip or ID and when we first decided to get a dog that's where we found him. Our Irish Red Setter was adopted from Donegal Pet Rescue after she was surrendered by her previous owners. Even this posts links to my writing, as it was during the journey to collect Molly (the red setter) that I drove through Sion Mills and became intrigued with the village and its architecture, in turn choosing it as the setting for The Glass House.

For more on Sion Mills: http://www.sionmills.org/

Murlough Beach in Dundrum is at the foot of the Mourne Mountains and, due to its dunes, this beach is maintained by the National Trust.
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/murlough/

The Fridge Door

My children are both at Primary School and enjoy using their ever developing knowledge of phonics, reading and writing to transfer their imagination onto paper. Since I started this blog they've been asking me to add some of their stories and they chose one each. My eldest was asked to write a story entitled The Magic Tree for school and my youngest recently wrote What A Day.

I come across so many people who said they enjoyed writing as children but who found they didn't have time for it as they got older or kept it a secret hobby. When our children draw pictures or bring their art work home from school, I'm sure many parents will admire it, stick it on the fridge until it gets covered with the rest of the school notes, schedules, appointments and to-do lists that rule our lives. So, this is a fridge-door post to show my children some recognition and praise because some days we all need a pat on the back.

The Magic Tree

"Bye Mum,' I said, as I rushed out the door to the zip wire. 

"Be careful Matt," mum said. I got into the zip wire and shot down into my Buggati. Then I raced of and then I saw a tree made of solid steel!!!. I slammed the brakes and got out.

It had leaves made of gold and it was humongous!!!! It had twigs and branches of bronze and its trunk was made of steel.

I climbed up and to my surprise it had a slide going down. I slid down it. Wow!!! The tree started to shake. I slid into a room. There was a screen and then I saw a dinosaur. I saw a TF button at the side of the screen and a ZI button too. I ran over and pressed the ZI button and it zoomed in. "Aaaaaahhhhh," I said. "It's an Allosaurus." Suddenly it started to come towards me. I ran over and pressed the TF button. Tree Fight. The tree sprung arms and legs. "Wow," I said as controls popped up. Then I started to fight. But I was no match for it.

After a while my tree was dead. Suddenly, I was sucked into a portal. I found myself back in the place were the tree had been. One new tree was starting to grow. I saw a packet of magic tree seeds beside it, so I picked them up. I jumped into my Buggati and drove home. 

What A Day

One morning mum was doing the washing. Mac, the dog, was having a nap. Lily asked mum, "Where are we going?"

Mum thought Victoria was painting and Spike was playing Star Wars with Luke. But then mum came in, 'It's time to go and pick some leaves and come home and paint them.'

So they went out to pick some leaves.

When they got there Victoria shouted, "I see a really big one."

"Let's go get it!" said Spike."I'll pick this one,"said Spike.

I'll pick this one," said Lilly.

But Victoria was polite and didn't say a word.

"Stop!" shouted mum. "Now you can go and pick some other leaves. 

When they got home everyone said, "What a day!"

NaNoWriMo

I first heard of National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo, last year and I was impressed by the amount of people who managed to complete it. The idea is you write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. You have to submit it for verification at the end of the month and if they confirm you've reached the target you'll get an 'I'm a NaNoWriMo Winner,' badge.

National Novel Writing Month

There's also a rebels version which you can enter if you can't comply with the full rules. So, for example, if you've already started writing something but need encouragement or a goal to help you finish it, then you use the 50,000 word target to complete it and get your Rebel verification.

NaNoWriMo Rebel

When I turned my mind to deciding whether I would try it this year, I still had a long way to go with The Glass House and thought I might use the Rebel target to spur me on. Instead, I got into the mood and wrote until it was completed. So, now I'm in a dilemma. Do I try to write something for it this year? Do I have the energy or motivation to do so, after completing The Glass House? Or, do I forget about it this year and concentrate on polishing The Glass House? Decisions, decisions.

Whatever I decide to do I want to wish everyone going for it in November the best of luck and hope there's a new bestseller or award winning book lurking out there for you.

A Thank You

I'm overdue adding this post. I was thrilled to discover that National Trust Mount Stewart shared my blog post about Mount Stewart on google+. So, thank you to them.

This is their google page, containing lots of other posts with information on the estate and some beautiful photographs:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107831660336607839127/posts

New Pitch

Having finished The Glass House, I realised I needed to work on a new pitch for it and I'm hoping this one sums it up better.

A peaceful life, ensconced in her restored Victorian Glass House was all Caitlin wished for. When a television producer comes calling her dreams become nightmares.

Caitlin: is twenty-eight and lives in a crumbling house near the village of Sion Mills in Northern Ireland. Her energy and finances are focused on her restored Victorian Glass House and her burgeoning horticultural business.

Niamh: at twenty-five, she's Caitlin's younger sister and the siblings seem to have little in common, Niamh preferring nail extensions to green fingers. She's married to Tom, a fifty year-old property developer and her relationship with her sister is strained by Caitlin's dislike of him.

Ellie: Tom's nineteen year-old daughter who meets her step-mother when she's expelled from boarding school and has to move in with her father.

Tom, Jack and Stuart are the three men who are drawn into the lives of these women. When they are all pulled into the residue of Northern Ireland's paramilitary gangs, impressions are challenged and the value of family, friendship and honesty is revealed.

A Good Feeling

Over 76,000 words, 240 double-line spaced pages and 40 chapters, the first draft of The Glass House is complete. It's the second manuscript I've finished and I feel very satisfied having written that final word.

It's taken me by surprise. My first pitch for it suggested the main character would be Caitlin and the story would centre around her relationship with her sister, Niamh. I had a third female character planned, Chloe. Her name has changed to Ellie and she's gone from a minor character who created a situation Niamh and Caitlin needed to get out off, into a central character who helps drive the plot. I'm going to need a new pitch.

My First Meme

I've been tagged in a meme through the BritMums blogging network I belong to. My first one, so here's hoping I get it right.


These are the rules I've been given:
- choose 5 other deserving blogs with less than 200 subscribers to nominate and link their blogs in your post.
- post 5 random facts about yourself

- tell your nominees you have chosen them for this award by leaving a comment on their blogs

- answer the 5 questions the tagger has asked you and ask your own 5 questions to the people you nominate

- no tag backs

5 random facts about me:

1. I run a business from home boarding small animals and have a mini zoo of rescue pets.

2. I was born with Coates Disease and as a result lost my left eye when I was two.

3. I got one of the highest grades in the UK for Part 1 of the Trading Standards Diploma and was presented with an award for doing so at the annual Trading Standards Conference.

4. For the first time in about twenty years I own a bike again, after buying myself one in the January sales - and I'm loving getting out on it.

5. I'm from Northern Ireland, and moved back after our first child was born, but I lived in England for eleven years.

The questions I've been asked by The Mums To Do List are:

1. How would you like your blog to develop over the next year?

I didn't set out with a long term plan when I began blogging so this is a good question. Made me think about the future. As the blog is about my writing and musings I suppose, ideally, I'd like to see it follow the process of writing manuscripts, braving criting and submissions and, if life were perfect, finding and agent and publisher who wanted to take a chance on me. Achieving that would help another wandering mum find a new path.

2. What time of day do you blog?

I often prepare the blog posts in advance, especially those with photographs, when I have peace to concentrate on them. So, that's either in the morning when the kids are at school or at night when they've gone to bed.

3. Have you any regrets in terms of what you have done as a parent so far?

Regrets as a parent. That I've still not learnt the art of great patience.

4. What would be your ideal job if you could change job/return to work/start work?

I was a solicitor before I had my children and it was a job I studied and worked hard for. I would like to get back to it in some shape or form. My dream job would to be an author, something I'd secretly dreamt of since gaining praise from a fabulous English teacher many, many years ago.

5. How do your family feel about your blog?

Generally, they are supportive. My mum likes to look through the pictures, my husband's there when I need someone to talk through the techie side and my children are itching to get some of their own stories onto it.

I've chosen to tag:

http://www.mummysonthewine.com
http://www.moors-mummy.blogspot.co.uk/
http://theoliversmadhouse.wordpress.com/
http://3childrenandit.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.mummeblog.com/

and an extra tag: http://www.everyoneelseisnormal.com/

And the questions for them are:

1. If you have a favourite author why does their writing appeal to you?
2. What's your favourite activity to do as a family?
3. Why did you start blogging?
4. When blogging which do you think is more important: quantity or quality?
5. What's your favourite part of the day?

I'm Addicted

52,000 words in and my laptop has become a new limb. Why is it when you get into the flow of writing a story you can't leave it alone? Even when I stop, I'm thinking about where a scene will go next, listening to conversations play out in my head, working out the transition from one stage to another.

It's an addiction. So, what happens when the final words are drawn from you? Do you feel satisfaction at completing your story or do you miss the characters and long to be back with them? Maybe we should have a Writer's Anonymous to help us through it, especially to move from the writing to editing phase and worse still to help us distance from it when we open it up to crit sites or editors.

Lovely Surprise

I opened my post box this morning to find a jiffy bag from Harper Collins in New York. Inside was a copy of Lindsey Kelk's I Heart Paris c/o Chick Lit Central.

So, a thank you to them and I'm looking forward to reading Lindsey's book.

This is how I got my copy: Chick Lit Central Blog

Something Spooky

I think I must have had some inspiration this week for a halloween short story. On Monday night we had one of those very clear, bright full moons, it even had a wisp of cloud across it. On the same night I was travelling along our narrow, winding country roads and rounded a corner to see two eyes picked up in the car headlights. A stag in the road. He ran off and leapt the hedge into a field. On the way home, along the same country roads, tonight the moon is looming, large and low in the sky and is the most vibrant orange. What's going on in Co. Down this week?

I've tried taking photos on the phone but just can't capture the quality of the night sky.

Seems I saw the harvest moon: Earthsky

Caitlin's Glass House

Following on from the post about the walled garden at Crom I thought I'd share some extracts from the new manuscript I'm working on, The Glass House, where the reader is first introduced to Caitlin's glass house.

A deep, satisfying warmth filled Caitlin, once again safe in her sanctuary. Her glass house. No ordinary structure of glass and aluminium, but a perfect piece of Victorian architecture and engineering, sitting at the edge of a walled garden, in a property once owned by Caitlin's grandparents. Now in her ownership and care, it looked stunning, with its dwarf brick walls, sparkling glass and white, cast iron frame, topped with a ridge of fleur-de-lis, but it was a very different picture when she first inherited it. Caitlin’s heart had swelled with sympathy when she first glimpsed the rusted framework, most of the glass broken and what little remained so black with dirt it was unrecognisable, crumbling brickwork, overgrown with nettles and layers of mud so thick they could have sent a geologist to heaven. Her grandparents had spent years caring for and developing the garden apart from one corner which they had left wild to bring in the welcome, pollinating bees and butterflies, and it was whilst pruning and shaping that corner that Caitlin discovered the doorway in the wall leading to the glass house.

A rap on the glass and the scraping of the door being opened, interrupted Caitlin's solitude.

'Thought I might find you in here.' Jack announced as he stepped into the entrance porch of the glass house.

'Where else? I hope you haven't called round for money?' Caitlin asked, without looking up, recognising his voice.

'No, we're all settled up. Just wanted to see how my baby is holding up?'

'She's fabulous, but she's a high maintenance girl.'

'Just the way I like them.'

'My finances would appreciate it if she wasn't.'

'She'll pay you back for all the love you've given her one day.'

Love is the most appropriate phrase Jack could have chosen, nothing but that amount of dedication could have saved the glass house from its almost complete destruction. Restoring it had been a labour of love, and often torture, for Caitlin, but it was also in homage to her much loved and missed grandparents.

'Do you remember the first day you saw her?' Caitlin asked.

'I remember walking round that garden for fifteen minutes trying to find you and then wondering what I'd stumbled into when that mud monster materialised through the wall.'

'I was a bit of a sight wasn't I? That mud was so thick, I still don't know how I landed face down in it. If it wasn't for your help I'd still be digging it out.'

'I've never seen anyone so excited at discovering soil and stones.'

'How dare you,' Caitlin laughed. 'You know fine rightly they were more than soil and stones; flower beds, bordered with that gorgeous brickwork.' She pointed to the beds, now filled with an abundance of plants in various stages of growth, framed by intricately twisted deep red bricks.

Caitlin suspected Jack stayed longer that first day than he had intended to, and perhaps the next, and the next. The problem was, every time they made one discovery it led to another. After the beds, came the pipes running through them. Then he was there for the water tank that had to be scooped and drained clean of algae ridden, foul smelling, stagnant water; he offered his home and internet access to research how the pipes, tank and stove should connect to operate as irrigation and heating systems; he provided an extra pair of eyes and arms for the many hours in salvage yards and the heavy replacement materials; he helped free the winches for the ventilation windows from rust before finally restoring all the glass, which had required meticulous measuring and cutting.

He'd helped restore the glass house to its former glory and now it provided a flexible and perfect growing environment for the plants Caitlin cultivated for both her own enjoyment and her burgeoning gardening business.

Crom Walled Garden

I'm in the midst of a new manuscript, The Glass House. The main character, Caitlin, has inherited her grand-parents property, near the village of Sion Mills, and their love of gardening. On clearing a wild corner of the walled garden, on the property, she discovers a door that leads to a dilipadated Victorian Glass House. With the help of local handy-man, Jack, she restores it so that it becomes the centre of her burgeoning horticultural business. The Glass House contains other themes that run through the story.

I had already drafted the second chapter, in which Caitlin's glass house is first described but I was thrilled when I discovered the walled garden and derelict glass house at Crom Castle. I'm grateful to the staff member who told me about it. This glass house, like Caitlin's, is in a very sorry state. It doesn't exactly match my vision or description but does show the remains of pipes, brick walls and benches. It's a ghost of the beautiful and functional building it must once have been. The National Trust staff also told me when they cleared some of the wall and area round the glass house last year, they revealed marks along the wall. These show where other houses and structures once stood. In the barn building that the Trust use at Crom, there is an information centre. Within it they have an excellent plan of the walled garden from early in the 1900's, which includes the walled, circular rhododendron pool at the centre of it. Today only one corner of the garden is in use as allotments.

National Trust: Crom
Discover NI: Crom
http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/enchanting-walled-garden-of-crom.html

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