So, after the excitement of Saturday I got steadily sicker, until by Wednesday it took me the whole day to write 700 words. On Thursday I gave up and awarded myself a sick day, which I spent reading blogs.
As a result of Chuck Wendig’s “promote yourself” post I added a whole load of new blogs to my friend list, which is good. But this morning I find the RSS feed thingy has given me all their recent posts in one huge slab of ‘OMG, my FL is broken!’ I hope that will settle down from now on or some of them will have to go again. I don’t mind reading one post of a particular blog a day, but I can’t cope with five.)
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As if the prospect of learning the 5000 tunes in my handwritten, photocopied stack of ‘essential music for morris musicians’ sheet music on the whistle wasn’t enough, I seem to have decided to take up the pipe and tabor. This is the original morris one man band – a three hole pipe that you play in one hand, while you simultaneously play a drumbeat with the other hand, like so:
This makes the overblowing you do on the whistle to get the second octave seem like child’s play. To get a single octave on the tabor pipe you have to overblow once and twice, and to get the higher octave, three and four times. (What am I talking about? See here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Pipe_and_tabor)
I can feel my brain protesting, but I can at least play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with drum accompaniment, and almost play the morris tune “Balance the Straw” with rhythm. I’m fairly sure that this time next week I could do a good job of “Balance the Straw,” if I practiced it every day between then and now. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.
Mustn’t stop practicing the whistle too, though, or this will just end up destroying the progress I’ve made on that.
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What is this ‘promo op’ of which you speak? Well, I thought it was a really good idea of Chuck Wendig’s to throw open the comments section of his blog to people who wanted to promote their book/blog/vid/editing/dogwalking service/any other thing. So naturally I thought it would be a good idea to do it here too.
Basically, if you have a new book out, or any other thing you want to shout about, leave a comment here. I don’t guarantee I’ll reply to them all, but I’ll see them all and so will anyone else who comes here. And it can’t hurt, right? 🙂
So, last Saturday was the first time since that terrifying day in September when I appeared at a public dance-out as Coton Morris Men’s solo musician, and the first time I’ve played for them as their solo musician and been in Coton kit. Here is the proof:
(Coton musician’s kit = anything you like as long as it’s black and white.)
I felt very official, and – while nowhere near as nervous as the first time – still pretty shaky-legged. But I was proud of myself for playing at four different venues around the town, in front of two other morris sides at each spot. Each with its own musicians who almost certainly knew the tunes better than me.
I’ve even managed to master the morris-musician’s magical ability to direct a focussed blast of air at the dancers, to keep them up during the highly technical levitating dances:
It was a great day. As you can see, it was warm enough to stand around in shirtsleeves (in March!) and we danced alongside Fenstanton Morris, Manor Mill Clog Dancers, Little Egypt and of course The Riot. The Riot were the hosts of the day and I was sorry not to be dancing with them, but at the same time I really felt like an essential part of Coton for the first time since I joined. I’m not quite sure which is ‘my’ side any more. Both, I suppose.
A dishevelled man swims out of the sea, crawls up the beach and with trembling hands holds up a sign that says “And now for something completely different…”
It will probably come as no surprise, to anyone who knows how I work, when I say that I’ve reviewed my progress on Elf Princes’ Quest and decided that with 11 scenes down, 22,000 words so far, and 17 scenes still to go, this is looking like a short novel instead of a novella. The whole “planning by scenes” thing is still valid, I suppose, as long as I remember that my scene length is a little less than twice what I think it’s going to be. I was going for a 30,000 word novella, and it looks like it will be a 50,000 word novel instead.
By this time I suppose the surprise is that I ever manage to write anything short at all.
I suppose they could just be being thorough, in reading the second book in the series to see how it ends, but it’s still a thrill 🙂 They call it a “brisk and engrossing sequel to Bomber’s Moon” and say “it’s a treat for readers who like their romance with a healthy dose of adventure.”
They weren’t so sure about my scenery this time around, but I put that down to the fact that this half of the book is set in Elfland, and I felt I had to describe it more carefully than I described the stuff in our own world. My theory being that I shouldn’t rely on the reader to fill in the setting from their own experiences, since it was unlikely any of them had visited it.
1. Go to page 77 (or 7th) of your current ms
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 other authors. (I am not doing this – anyone who wants to do it can. Those who don’t want to don’t have to.)
I have two current manuscripts, both of which are in first draft form and aren’t really fit to be seen. They were written using Write or Die, which has no italics. So the //s are there to indicate bits that are to be italicised later.
The Pilgrims’ Tale is intended as a fairly serious historical novel. Elf Princes’ Quest is intended as what UtH was originally meant to be before it evolved – a fun little homoerotic potboiler with elves.
From page 7 of The Pilgrims’ Tale
“Not a warrior now, is he?” Cenred’s laughter turned on a pinhead into anger. “If he’d not been willing to bear the dishonour, he shouldn’t have let himself be captured. Look at him standing there, meek as a maid. Even now he could be fighting back. If he ran at us, we’d give him death. No, he chooses to be a real man’s whore with every breath he takes. I don’t give dog-shit what he was before. Now, he’s a coward. I hope the old man nails him so hard he can’t walk for a month, craven little lickspittle worm.”
Spit sprayed the side of Wulfstan’s face. He jerked away and wiped it, feeling filthier than it deserved. There was a shake in his fingers he hoped Cenred hadn’t seen, fruits of a strange, shrill panic under his breastbone he was surprised that no one but he could hear. /That could have been us. It still could be any one of us, if the Norsemen caught us. They’ve broken others, do you think they could not do the same to you?/
“She means to journey to Rome,” the sailor was saying, genial now he had the coins in his palm. “To make pilgrimage for the sake of her husband’s soul.”
The words conjured up a different world. All at once his mind was full of gold and white, the mother of God, serene and mild, and holy virgins whose maidenhead miraculously survived all the world could do to steal it. Washed clean, he thought /But of course, he is furious because he is afraid. Because no matter how he denies it, he knows this too could be him. And he would not have it so./
“Then,” said Ecgbert, smiling with the air of a man who has utterly routed his enemies, “I am all the more glad to have contributed to her weal.”
He held out his hand for the leash.
The slave did not look up again, but fixed his gaze on the rough rope in his new master’s hand and followed where he was tugged. They walked a little, further down the beach, away from the ships and the crowd, into the sparse dunes, where long grass hissed like snakes over tumbled stone.
From page 7 of Elf Princes’ Quest
His oystercard was good for another six months, thank God, so he hopped on the tube to get back, and half past one saw him opening up a second time, worried by the strange tinted look to the windows. When he opened the door, a roil of brown smoke billowed out, stinking of charred coffee grounds and melted electrical cable.
/No,/ he thought, in a childish protest that this was too much, as he ran through black fug into the little kitchen, and found the percolator – which he had forgotten to switch off – had boiled itself dry, and the jug was smoked brown, spackled all over with cracks. He could feel the heat from six feet away.
“The hand has to be open,” Sensei Richard had said, only two nights ago, “the body poised and the spirit at peace. If you’re angry when you fight, you will make mistakes. You’ll be hasty and slapdash, you’ll go for openings that aren’t there, instead of making them. You must be in control of yourself and your opponents. So, first center yourself.”
It came back now because Dave wanted to scream, wanted to snatch up that mocking pot and smash it on the ground, swearing all the while. Instead he breathed in carefully, and out, settled his weight, tried to be aware of the chi moving through his body like twined fibres of fine light.
Then he wedged the street door open and ran down into the cellar to turn off the power before he risked unplugging the thing. This day did not need added third degree burns or electrocution.
When he returned to a shop made greyer by natural light, there were two men by the till. He stopped on the second to last stair to watch them from behind the cellar door, and all the unfairness of today, the pity, the pettiness and the anxiety, balled themselves up and fell away. Suddenly he knew exactly what Sensei Richard meant by “empty.” On another occasion it would have been a revelation. Right now it was a distraction that fell away into silence as soon as it formed.
A burly one and a thin one. On the burly one, the place of hair was taken up by tattooed spiderwebs. Sovereign rings glinted on his fingers, and steel ones in his eyebrows.
It’s been another week of illness at the croft of bees. The children went back to school but Mr. B and I got it instead, so the blog posting schedule remains in a mess, and the house remains uncleaned. I did some writing on Elf Princes’ Quest, but not as much as I would have done, sans sickness.
Even what I did do rather got away from me – there was no shower scene in the plan! I console myself with the knowledge that when your mysterious guest has an open cut, and has been lying unconscious in a muddy gutter, it would have been irresponsible not to wash the wound, so some form of shirts-off-and-warm-water scene was necessary to the plot.
Sudden change of topic:
On Tuesday evening I nobly dragged myself out of my sick bed to help the Riot teach the First Ely Guides how to do this dance
and noticed as I’ve noticed every time we’ve gone to do one of these things that children don’t seem to be able to skip any more. I’m sure I could skip at that age. I’m surprised it’s even something that people need to learn. I always thought it was innate, but so few of the scouts and brownies we’ve tried to teach can even grasp the stepping that it can’t be. Too many Nintendos, not enough skipping ropes in the playground, I guess.
Sudden change of topic again:
Note to self, when handling the knives and scrapers you made during your “how to make flint tools” workshop, do not rub your finger along the edge, trusting that it’s only a stone so it can’t do you any harm. It turned out it was actually so sharp I didn’t even feel the cut until it started bleeding. Never underestimate stone tools again!
And the last one:
I’m glad to say Sceaftesige Garrison’s website has been taken over by someone who is not me, and who has done a great job of making it look much more up to date. Though I’m also glad to say that my reading of Caedmon’s Hymn, the article I did about Saxon medicine, and the vid I made of Julian playing my hearpe is still on there. Who’d have thought a Saxon lyre would make such a good guitar?
Last time, I was complaining that I don’t seem to be able to do the first draft of one project while brainstorming or editing another. This may be because my mind doesn’t easily hold two stories at the same time, or it may be because I’m just lazy and once I’ve put in the hours of writing necessary on the first draft, I don’t feel obliged to do anything on the other project. Out of those two possibilities, it’s hard to tell which one is the real reason. Maybe it’s both?
However I do have a concrete example of what happens if I try to write the first draft of one project while researching for another. That would be what happened while I was writing Under the Hill.
As is typical of me, I first planned UtH as a novella. It was going to be a little palate cleanser between Shining in the Sun and the next big historical I intended to write – a simple little story which I didn’t have to concentrate on too hard. It would be a modern, gay version of Tam Lin, set in an area I know well from where I grew up, thus requiring very little research and not much plotting, and freeing my mind to work on the bigger novel I meant to do next.
That bigger novel was going to be called Whirlwind Boys – a 100,000 word gay historical set in World War Two, in which careful grammar-school boy Danny, enrolled in the RAF as a navigator, fell for reckless bad-boy Michael, the pilot of his Lanc. They were going to be shot down over Holland and have various adventures with the Dutch resistence while having an epic journey home.
The trouble was that as I wrote Under the Hill, I fell in love with it. I loved the characters. I didn’t want Ben and Chris to have such a short adventure together. I hadn’t expected to find the way they sniped at each other so charming. I hadn’t realised that Chris’ air of haunted mystery would make me want to poke at it with a stick to find out what was underneath.
At the same time, I hadn’t expected to be so utterly blown away by the romance (in the old sense) of the Lancaster bomber – the cameraderie of the crews, the quiet, terrified, stiff-upper-lip heroism of facing death night after night for your country and then coming home to find out your government is ashamed of you.
So, on the one hand I was in love with Chris and on the other hand I was in love with these quiet and dogged heroes and I had only the rather inadequate filters of my own imagination to keep them apart. Naturally both loves began to bleed together. Wouldn’t it be fantastic, I thought, if Chris was a bomber pilot? That would explain why he was so weird and old fashioned. He didn’t seem like a guy out of his time, he really was a guy out of his time. And that would fit with the theme Under the Hill seemed to have developed while I wasn’t paying attention – the theme of having lost one’s whole world, of trying to find yourself when everything that once defined you is gone.
But the idea of a pilot being in love with his navigator was a persistent one. That was the emotional core of the WWII book, the reason I wanted to write it. And it was left hanging about, seriously injured now that Chris had taken over about 90% of Michael. It was kind of inevitable that Danny should also make his way into Under the Hill. Because he didn’t have to be grafted on to an existing character, he could come in wholesale, though under a changed name, and become Geoff, Chris’ long-lost wartime sweetheart.
Once that had happened, it was like a bolt of lightning striking the mad scientist’s laboratory and fizzing down the copper conductors. Under the Hill lived! It LIVED, I TELL YOU!!!! HAHAHAHAHAA!!!
But Whirlwind Boys died on the table, with all its parts cut out and stitched into the monster Fantasy. I don’t think I will ever write it now the spark of life that once animated it has gone somewhere else. And although Under the Hill is immensely better for it, I’m not sure that it’s an abomination experiment I ought to repeat.
I had this week all planned out – in so far as I ever have a plan. I was going to blog on Monday about how my muse was like a giant amoeba, engulfing everything in its path and growing, growing, until it ATE MANHATTAN. (I’m not even sure where Manhattan is, but it sounds more glamourous than Manchester, and London would only give my poor amoeba a stomach ache.) Wednesday I would blog about something small, and on Friday I would post a short story that I originally wrote for the UK Meet anthology without looking at the submissions call, which turned out not to be right for that anthology in numerous ways. The rest of the time, I would write.
But then both my kids decided to be at home, ill, while I had two different hospital appointments at two different hospitals on two different days, plus a doctor’s appointment somewhere else on another day – all of which require an hour’s travel each way and three quarters of an hour sitting round in a waiting room. And this morning my husband reminded me that while the children are well enough to go back to school tomorrow, we’re going to the Reenactors’ Market that day – which is a full day trip.
So, I suspect that not much writing will be done this week. I should pat myself on the back that I managed any, I suppose. On previous occasions when I had the sick and ailing at home, I didn’t manage to set pixel to screen at all.
Still, the novella tentatively titled “Elf Princes’ Quest” has finally reached the point where the leads have survived an assassination attempt each (I had no idea Chris knew Kung Fu!) and are about to meet each other, so that should be fun when I can settle down to it next week. And the blog post can go to one of the numerous places I seem to have signed myself up to guest blog at.
Not that I’ve actually written it yet. Or any of the other ones. Argh! How do people blog and twitter and Facebook and write and juggle a job and children? Why can’t I?
*Does the headless giant chicken dance of stress.*
Every so often, I have a drive to create more, faster, to build up my backlist and bank account and reputation as a hard working author and all that jazz.
Recently I’ve been trying the whole “write at least 1000 words a day and no slacking ever, no excuses, you layabout” thing. This was fine, when I was working on The Pilgrims’ Tale. It was about 90K long, and I could work on that every day, doing between 1000-3000 words a day and making steady progress.
Once I finished it, though, I found myself in a dilemma – I’d sworn to write every day, but I didn’t know what to write. Oh noes! And could I take days off to sit down and brainstorm new plots? Not really – not if I wanted to continue with the writing every day thing.
What I tried to do recently is to write a novella (the plot-plan of which I thought up while I was writing the Loki stories) in the mornings, and then brainstorm the next novel in the afternoons. In theory this should work well enough. In practice, the result is that instead of doing 2-3K of writing a day I do 1K of writing and then bum around for the rest of the day answering emails and avoiding the brainstorming altogether.
I’m beginning to think I would actually get more done if I just wrote when I was writing, and just brainstormed when I was brainstorming. I can write twice as fast when I’m not trying to think up a completely different plot in the second writing session. And surely if I was brainstorming all day every day, it would only take me a week or so to come up with a new novel plot? At the rate I’m going at the moment, that would only be a loss of 5000 words and I could make that up in five days of writing two sessions instead of one.
TL:DR – essentially, although having multiple projects on the go in different stages at once sounds like a great idea, I don’t think I’m made for multitasking. I would probably work just as fast, and much more comfortably, by taking some non-writing days for other essential parts of the writing process.
I could always call them writing days, because surely the process of writing also includes plotting, writing character sheets and synopses and timelines, drafting, second drafting, rewriting and editing? It’s not all adding words to the first draft.
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Speaking of different projects, though, I may have written a story for this year’s UK Meet anthology. I will have to check the submission guidelines. On the principle that it’s ‘GLBTQ Fiction’ not ‘m/m romance’ I’ve written a story about gender (for the Q part) that contains no romance at all. I wonder if it’s eligible. If not, it may become next week’s free read.
I’ve held out for a long time against all this advice (indeed against the downright assumption) that all writing ought to be done in scenes.
“But I write in chapters!” I cried. “Why should I bother with fiddly little bits of scenes when I can see the whole chapter in one lump and just work from that?”
Then I thought “well, I’ll just try out Scrivener, everyone raves about it so.”
Scrivener is set up so that you do your plotting on virtual note cards. A single note card isn’t big enough to hold all the stuff that goes on in a chapter (unless your chapters are very small indeed.) And presto, I found myself plotting in smaller chunks. Then I found that my smaller chunks corresponded to segments of about 1000-1500 words.
Suddenly I knew how many cards I had to fill to create a story of any given length. Wow! I didn’t even realise I needed to know that until I knew it.
Plus, I can do 1000-1500 words in a go, which means I can write one (oh, God, let’s just surrender and call it a…) scene in a writing session. And that means I can cross off at least one card every day.
Which means I know how long it’s going to take me to write any project. 60 scenes = at most 60 days = 60,000-90,000 words.
All of which gives me such a heady sense of control you wouldn’t believe it. Plus, there’s the instant reward and gratification – the daily sense of achievement – of making measurable progress.
Sometimes, in the middle of a novel, it feels as if I’ve been going forever and there’s still forever left to go – that I’ll be stuck like one of those anxiety dreams, driving, driving, never able to find the turn off or get home. With this, every day the scenes left to write will be going down. I’ll know how many days I have to go. I won’t have to panic and run around tearing at my hair and ranting about how impossible it all is and how I ought to just pack it in and take up bonsai forestry instead.
I may still do so anyway, because that’s just me. But here and now I throw up my hands in a melodramatic manner and admit that OK, you did tell me. No, I know I didn’t listen, but yes, you were right. Scenes may actually be a very similar thing to sliced bread.
Welcome to Elin Gregory, an old friend but a new author. Elin has just had her first solo book published, and has all sorts of interesting things in the pipeline – I’m particularly looking forward to On a Lee Shore, and A Fierce Reaping. Elin and I seem to back opposite sides in history, but that just makes her ideas more interesting to me. She’s one of those writers in whose historical accuracy I have complete faith, so I can read her books hoping to learn something, as well as to be entertained.
Enough blathering from me. I’ll hand you over to Elin now:
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Hello, Alex. Thank you so much for inviting me to your blog. It’s great to be here.
1. What do you do when you’re not writing?
I’m married with a live at home adult daughter and a very elderly parent living nearby so family matters take some keeping up with. Also I work 4 days a week in the local museum. Apart from that I read, a lot, dabble a bit with drawing and painting and never seem to do enough housework. Show me a creative person who has a perfectly spick and span house – I think most of us can think of more interesting things to do
2. What are you enjoying reading at the moment?
After saying nasty things about Diana Gabaldon’s Crosstitch and getting recommendations from friends – actually I think it was you, Nan Hawthorne and Erastes – I bit the bullet and bought a £0.01 copy of Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. I was really surprised by the quality of it and was enjoying it a lot until Lord John started whimpering about that long streak of deus ex machina, Jamie Fraser. Now I’m growling “For goodness sake have some pride, man!” Other than that I have books to review and I am reading anything I can get my hands on re: 1920s London [Queer London by Michael Holroyd has a fund of stories] and 1940s agriculture [2 books by Charles Bowden about shepherding and working the land with heavy horses are proving to be most inspiring]. And there’s other things too. I’m usually part of the way through one of my Terry Pratchetts. I picked up a battered copy of Nation last week on a stall in the covered market and adored it, but I need to read it again to take in the fine detail. That’s usually where the greatest treasures lie.
3. Tell us about the books you have out.
THE book I have out 😀 Just the one, though I have a couple of stories in last years UK Meet anthologies, British Flash and Tea and Crumpet.
“Alike As Two Bees” is set in ancient Greece and revolves around a yardful of jobbing sculptors who are carving the fiddly bits for a rich man’s house. The main protagonist, Philon, has a particular aptitude for carving horses and finds one perfect mare to use as a model. Her rider, Hilarion, isn’t nearly as pretty as the horse but neither of them care. Both are happy souls most of the time. There are supporting characters, little bits of angst, humour, a healthy diet. I hope some people might like it. I enjoyed writing it and I hope that shows.
4. Who has been the biggest influence upon your work?
Ooh difficult question. There are several authors of gay lit whose work I marvel at, envy and would love to emulate. But, in general, Rosemary Sutcliff was a huge influence. I adore her characters, her plots, her style, her scholarship. She also wrote Sword At Sunset, the first book I ever read that had a positive depiction of gay characters. That things ended sadly for them, as was usual in books of that period, was a grief to me when I was about 10. Mary Renault is another favourite – don’t think that’s much of a surprise – and I love the way Dorothy Dunnett takes an historical period and milks it of every possible opportunity for drama. Also her hero – Francis Crawford of Lymond – is tough, funny, civilised, intelligent, and canonically sexually ambiguous. That he’s utterly gorgeous doesn’t hurt.
5. What works in progress have you got on the go at the moment?
LOL – too many! “On A Lee Shore” early 18th century pirates. “A Fierce Reaping” Dark Ages warfare set in Northumbria. “Eleventh Hour” – secret intelligence caper set in 1928 London. “The Long Secret Summer” – romance against the backdrop of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the shepherding year. Some are more advanced than others. The piratey one is almost finished.
6. While doing research have you ever done anything really exciting or
strange?
I’ve made chain mail. It’s really boring and hurt my fingers. I’ve also worn it and that sucks too. No wonder the Normans were so stroppy. I’m married to one of the few men in Britain to have a framed certificate of Mastery from the Craft Guild of Bowyers and Fletchers on the wall, so I have a houseful of bow and arrows and used to shoot them regularly. It’s a beautiful sport, very instinctive and calming. One day I’ll write about medieval longbow men, but not just yet.
7. Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? What do you do then?
I have a whole barrage of things to do but, honestly, blocks clear when they feel like it. It depends what’s causing it. At the moment I have a back problem which means writing is uncomfortable. Can’t do much about that. Otherwise Write or Die can be enough of a shock to get the words going again. Or a sufficiently strident beta reader. Or sometimes ‘drawing’ the story in comic book form. Hand writing on paper rather than typing is good. Skipping a ‘hard’ scene to do something else can help. If all else fails, I have a notebook with an over the top police procedural fantasy novel in it and I add a chapter to that. Writing something crazy that nobody will ever see is great fun and reminds me that I’m supposed to be enjoying the process.
8. Alpha males, do you – (a)love them? – (b)think they should be shot? Why?
I loathe alpha males in person. To often alpha male type of behaviour is diplayed by a form of boorish bullying that is horribly unattractive and threatening. But I do enjoy writing them, if you define alpha male as a supremely confident man who is certain that there’s nothing about more bad ass than he is. Then, naturally, I prove that he’s wrong! 😀 If I make an alpha character I like to give them hidden vulnerabilities. It’s such great fun breaking down all that arrogance and confidence then building it back up again into something more moderate and benign.
9: How did you feel the day you held the copy of your first book in your hands?
Complete sensory overload! No really. I’d arrived at the 2011 UK Meet after an incredibly stressful morning and there it was – Tea and Crumpet, with a very friendly tea pot on the front and a mass of stories inside, including one of mine. Unbelieveable. I love ebooks – so convenient and so easy to store – but as a keepsake you can’t beat paper! I particularly like having all the signatures of the authors. That was a lovely souvenit of a super day and I’m looking forward to the next Meet – 15th September, 2012 in Brighton – brilliant.
So questions answered and thank you very much for having me. Below there are some details about Beeeees!
Alike as Two Bees
By: Elin Gregory
Published By: Etopia Press
Published: Mar 02, 2012
ISBN # 9781937976194
Word Count: 19,664
Heat Index: mildly spiced – korma rather than vindaloo
Blurb:
Horses, love, and the tang of thyme and honey…
In Classical Greece, apprentice sculptor Philon has chosen the ideal horse to model for his masterpiece. Sadly, the rider falls well short of the ideal of beauty, but scarred and tattered Hilarion, with his brilliant, imperfect smile, draws Philon in a way that mere perfection cannot.
After years of living among the free and easy tribes of the north, Hilarion has no patience with Athenian formality. He knows what he wants—and what he wants is Philon. Society, friends and family threaten their growing relationship, but perhaps a scarred soldier and a lover of beauty are more alike than they appear.
The Boat of Small Mysteries - A cozy mystery aboard a narrowboat, in which a murder and a disappearance keep our aroace detective from fully relaxing into the idyll of country life.
