Festival Fireworks is off to a great start with this review from Bookbustle!
* to wet your thrapple – to have a taste of something
An extract from Festival Fireworks before the blog tour which starts next week:
Andrew turned to her and took hold of her hands.
‘I want to thank you for arranging an absolutely fabulous party and to apologise for my bad-temper, my bad behaviour, and anything else bad about me that you don’t like.’
Jill stared at him, open-mouthed. He was apologising to her? Mr. Bossy Big-boots was actually saying sorry?
He must have seen her shock. ‘I really do mean it. It was one of the best parties we’ve ever had, and there were some interesting and hopefully lucrative contacts made. Some people will owe you a great vote of thanks.’
Jill nodded, still shocked. ‘Sam,’ she said. ‘He said he might get a contract from tonight.’
‘Exactly. And it’s all thanks to you.’
‘Not entirely. You made up the guest list, I just did what you asked. Well, after a fashion,’ she added, remembering the fiasco about the venue.
‘But the party wouldn’t have been so relaxed, and people wouldn’t have mixed so well if we’d had it where you booked it originally.’
‘Then, thank your neighbours. They really got things going.’
Andrew smiled at her. ‘You’re determined not to take any credit for it, are you? But I’m thanking you… like this.’
He pulled her towards him and bent his mouth to hers. Jill closed her eyes as his lips met hers. They were warm and sweet tasting, soft and tender, and kissed just the way she liked being kissed. She sighed gently and let herself draw even closer into his arms. Their kiss deepened, their mouths opened to each other, their bodies fitted themselves into each other, adjusting till closeness and warmth were satisfied. Heaven could not be any more perfect.
Their lips parted, their eyes opened, and they looked at each other in a new way; a new recognition taking over from the old. Mr. Bossy was gone, Mr. MacCallum-Blair was gone, only Andrew was left. Her Andrew. Jill smiled up at him and moved to kiss him again.
A loud buzz sounded.
Andrew drew apart from her. ‘Who can be wanting in at this time of the night?’ he said. He walked into the hall, flipped the switch on the entry phone, and said sharply, ‘Yes?’ into the speaker.
‘Police,’ came the tinny reply.
I was a scriptwriter for the children’s Radio and TV programmes on the BBC for many years and wrote loads of stories for them. Here’s one I wrote about Fergie who was pestered by a wee pest, the bogeyman. I hope your kids and grandkids enjoy reading it.
Fergie Ferguson was a clockmaker who lived in a little village on an island off the west coast of Scotland where the great Atlantic Ocean smashed and crashed on to the shore. He spent his days mending and repairing clocks and when he’d fixed them, setting them at the correct times that they could chime along with the rest. For Fergie Ferguson’s house was full of clocks. They sat on every surface in every room of his house and stood on every square of floor he had.
From every room in his house could be heard the tick tocking of his clocks. Some were slow, deep sounds….
TICK …. TOCK…..
….others were busy, hurried rhythms…..
ticktockticktock….
….and others were so quick and quiet you had to put your ear tight up against them in order to hear them……..
tick tock tick tock
All day long, the sound of ticking and tocking could be heard through the house. It was so loud it drowned out the thunder of the Atlantic waves crashing on the nearby shore. Fergie didn’t notice the noise, he was used to it but not many people came to visit because they couldn’t stand it for very long.
One day a visitor came to stay in Fergie’s house. Fergie hadn’t invited him and he didn’t even know he was there until one morning, Fergie got up as usual.
He was just in the middle of washing his face when he stopped.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he said to himself. ‘Something’s not right.’
He stood and listened, the water still dripping off the end of his nose and his hands all soapy. He could hear the clocks all ticking away – the big grandfather clock with its deep slow tick….
TICK …. TOCK…..
the clock that sat on the mantelpiece with its quicker ticking…..
ticktockticktock….
and the little clocks whose ticks could hardly be heard…..
tick tock tick tock….
….yes they were all there and none of them had stopped.
But still Fergie was sure that something was wrong. He quickly dried his face and rushed downstairs. Then it dawned on him.
‘They’re ticking the wrong way,’ he said. ‘My clocks aren’t going tick tock any more, they’re going tock tick.’
He listened carefully to each one. Sure enough, every clock was going tock tick. The big grandfather clock,
TOCK….TICK…
the clock on the mantelpiece,
tockticktocktick…
and the little quiet clocks….
tock tick tock tick.
‘Who’s done this?’ he shouted. ‘Who’s been tampering with my clocks?’
It was then that Fergie heard a little chuckle. It was so quiet that he scarcely heard it over the ticking, or rather tocking, of the clocks.
‘A bogey-man!’ said Fergie. ‘Don’t tell me a bogey-man has moved in.’
There was another little giggle.
‘Come out, you wee rascal!’ Fergie yelled. ‘Come out and show yourself!’
But of course, the wee bogey-man didn’t.
Fergus spent all day putting his clocks right so that they went tick tock and not tock tick, and then after supper he turned his whole house upside down looking for the bogey-man.
He didn’t find the wee man so at midnight, tired out, he gave up and went to bed.
It was very early the next morning when Fergie suddenly awoke. This time he knew at once that something was wrong. Very definitely wrong.
‘My clocks have lost their tick,’ he cried jumping out of bed and scuffling for his slippers in the half light. Sure enough, all his clocks were just going tock.
The big grandfather clock said,
TOCK………..TOCK…………TOCK very slowly and sadly,
the clock on the mantelpiece said
tock – tock – tock as if it had a limp
and the little clocks seemed to start and stop all the time,
tock. tock. tock.
Fergie was furious. ‘Just wait till I catch you, you wee menace,’ he yelled.
The wee bogey-man just laughed. Fergie chased after it till the sun was high in the sky but he did not manage to catch it or even a glimpse of it. All he heard was its laugh leading him a merry chase.
The rest of the day Fergie spent fixing his clocks so that they all went tick tock again. That night he was so exhausted he fell into bed with his clothes and boots on. When he woke the next morning, it was to the sound of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the shore nearby. Fergie listened for a moment then leapt out of bed.
‘Where are my clocks?’ he shouted. ‘I can’t hear any of them.’
He ran downstairs and there they all were, still keeping good time but silently. Not a tick or a tock from any of them.
‘What have you done with all my ticks and tock, you wee pest?’ he yelled. ‘Give them back to me at once.’
But the wee bogey-man just laughed.
Fergie hunted high and low throughout the house looking for his ticks and tocks. It wasn’t until he took the lid off his teapot that he found them all crammed in and desperate to get out. It took Fergie many hours to sort out what tick went where but at last all the clocks were back to their usual tick tocking.
‘I’ve had enough,’ said Fergie, mopping his brow. ‘You win. You can have this house to yourself. I’m leaving.’
The wee bogey-man was quiet. The next morning, Fergie was surprised to find that nothing had happened to his clocks overnight, every one was ticking and tocking as it ought to.
But Fergie’s mind was made up. He hitched his pony to the cart and loaded all his belongings and all his clocks on to it. The grandfather clock with its deep
TICK…TOCK..
the clock from the mantelpiece with its
ticktocckticktock
and all the little clocks with their quiet
tick tock tick tock.
Then he shouted ‘Giddy-up!’ and he and his pony set off for a place as far away from the wee bogey-man as he could find. But the noise from the Atlantic waves crashing on the shore was so loud that Fergie didn’t hear a little laugh coming from the back of his cart!
I collected many of the poems and stories I wrote for the BBC into A Drop of Rainbow Magic leaving blank pages for the children to use their imaginations to illustrate the stories in their own way.
So the kids are at home for the duration. And you have to entertain and educate them all day, every day for the next 12 weeks or however long it takes to get rid of the Covid 19 epidemic. Here’s a selection of a few of the books from my bookshelves that would help to keep them occupied while you have a coffee/tea/G&T/meltdown.
For younger children, Linda Strachan’s What Colour is Love? follows a baby elephant as he asks that question of lots of other animals till he gets the perfect answer. The kids can listen to it being read here by Linda:
For kids who are learning to read, then The Loch Ness Monster Spotters is for them. The McFee family are desperate to spot Nessie but do they?
My book, A Drop of Rainbow Magic is a collection of stories and poems I wrote for the BBC’s Children’s programmes on radio and TV. But it has no pictures to go with them. There are spaces left for the kids to use their imaginations and draw their own pictures to accompany the stories. And give you a break as well!
Pirates are always popular and The Jolley-Rogers and the Monster’s Gold is a swash-buckling tale of a monster who eats those who come in search of gold. Can they defeat the monster and find the treasure?
For older kids (and not just girls) Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse is a beautiful, funny and intriguing book with a secret book hidden in the back of it. Ada Goth has no friends but Ishmael, a mouse ghost, and together they set out to find what is going on in their spooky home.
Publication days come like buses – nothing for ages then two come at once.
Not only is this publication day of Festival Fireworks in ebook format – paperback following soon!
– but, as I discovered when the post arrived this morning, my article on the Traprain Law silver is also published in the latest edition of the Highlander magazine.
The hoard of Roman silver was found locally and can now be seen in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
A double whammy for the city as my novel is also set in Edinburgh!
The field outside my house has been shorn of its golden rapeseed and the harvest sent to the local rapeseed oil producing plant. Soon we’ll be able to buy a bottle of it to use for cooking. I’ve watched the crop grow and change from green to startling yellow and then to bronze and now reduced to a field of stubble. I wonder what the farmer will grow there next.
As for my own writing harvest, articles written over the long winter days are now surfacing. The Highlander magazine in the USA, taking articles on all things historical and Scottish, has just published The First Nursery School in the World, which Robert Owen set up in New Lanark in the early years of the nineteenth century. The ideas he put into practice about the education of young children are now standard but were revolutionary in his day.
And my writing buddy, Sheila Grant, also has an article in the magazine, a powerful piece on The Killing Times, the struggle the Covenanters in Ayrshire had to worship in the way they wished.
September’s Scottish Field carries my piece on Susan Ferrier, Scotland’s Own Austen, and her best-selling books published in the first half of the nineteenth century. She was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott, and although she was, in her time, more successful than him, she only has a small blue plaque on the outside of her Edinburgh home whereas the Scott Monument dominates Princes Street.
But the most successful harvest of all must be my potatoes. Regular readers of my blog will have followed their progress from seed potatoes chitting on my window ledge through to their breaking through the soil of their beds and burgeoning in the sun. I am almost tempted to say that I have too many. Certainly friends, family and neighbours have all been presented with some and we have been manfully eating our way through them. Fortunately, YouTube enlightened me on the method of freezing them so I have bags of frozen chips and roasties ready to see us through the winter.
At the moment, writing articles suits me best. It gets us out and about and meeting people as I research my latest topic. This afternoon, I hope to meet up with some metal detectorists and amateur archaeologists who have been excavating the lost palace of the Setons, burned down in 1715 after the first Jacobite Rebellion. Who knows what I shall harvest from the meeting!
What do the Traprain Law Treasure, Susan Ferrier, Vaclav Jicha, the first Nursery School in the world and Christian Maclagan have in common?
No idea? I’m not surprised as this random collection of topics are all subjects I’ve written articles about recently and which have all been accepted for publication in a variety of magazines here and overseas.
The Traprain Law Treasure is the largest hoard of Roman silver ever found in Europe and which was uncovered 100 years ago in East Lothian. At present, some of it is on display in Haddington. It is quite stunning and hard to believe that it spent almost 1500 years buried on a hillside.
Traprain Law Treasure
Susan Ferrier was a best-selling author in her day (the 19th century) and a good friend of Sir Walter Scott while the first nursery school in the world was set up at New Lanark, near Glasgow, by Robert Owen in the 1800s.
Susan Ferrier’s bestselling novel
Vaclav Jicha was a World War II flying ace killed in a plane crash near Haddington in 1945. Jicha Street is named in his honour in the town where he is buried. Many years after the war, his Czech fianceé discovered where he was laid and visited his grave every year till her death in 2010.
Fl Lt Vaclav Jicha DFC AFC
And Christian Maclagan was the first Scottish female archaeologist and a feisty woman to boot! She was unable to read her papers on her research to the Society of Antiquaries or be recognised for her work on Scottish prehistory because she was a woman.
One of Maclagan’s drawings of a broch
Circumstances mean that at the moment articles are what I am writing rather than longer pieces. I can’t commit to the long-term tunnel vision I require to write novels but I don’t want my writing muscle to atrophy so article writing suits me fine. It also means we can have days out to research and visit places associated with my topics; these so far have included the National Museum in Edinburgh, a graveyard in Haddington and a lay-by on the A1!
I have also met and corresponded with some lovely people who have helped me in a variety of ways with photos and insights and pointed me in the right direction when I wandered off topic.
But I have realised that there are many more advantages to the type of writing I’m doing at present. I send the articles to the editors of the various magazines I’m contributing to and I receive a yes or a no and that’s all I have to do. No hassling people for reviews, no checking Amazon rankings to see where I appear, no constant feeding of social media to keep me in the spotlight, no blanket flooding of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter in the hope of a few sales. All that time I would normally have to spend on such activities I can spend WRITING!
Recently when I was totting up my earnings versus expenses from my writing, I realised that I had spent more on advertising my ebooks than I had actually earned from them. I know I only have two published and that I’m not the most dedicated of self-promoters but I would need to have many more ebooks out there to make it worthwhile. For articles, I sit back and wait for the cheque to arrive when the magazine publishes my piece. Simples!
There has been a change however. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back again; apparently ebooks are losing their popularity compared with ‘real’ books and independent bookshops are making a comeback though they will never be as cheap as Amazon. However there is nothing more pleasant than browsing in a good bookshop, especially if there’s coffee to be had too, and there’s always the serendipitous chance of coming across a book that speaks to you, that you’ve never heard of, would never have thought of buying but which touches something in you. Until Amazon can give the browser an experience similar to that, then bookshops it is.
Maybe magazines are also due to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of their purported demise. There are still many out there which seem to defy all the odds and continue selling, if not as many copies as before, then enough to keep them viable. And the good old People’s Friend has just celebrated its 150th birthday and takes around 1000 feature articles each year.
I certainly hope magazines start to flourish again. I much prefer to read from a magazine or book rather than from a screen. A hard copy is there when you need it, you can flick backwards and forwards at will, and it won’t interfere with your reading pleasure by changing font size or page when you inadvertently stick a finger in the wrong place. And the batteries in a book or magazine never run out.
Sometimes, progress needs to take a step back now and again when we realise that the new ways are not as good as what we had before.
This is shameless advertising but how else can I tell you about what’s on offer? Big publishers have budgets for promotion and advertising and events and giveaways but us lowly authors (and that’s most of us in the writing game) have to do it all ourselves.
So, to paraphrase that old rhyme,
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the poor writer’s hat
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do
Please buy a book by me and God bless you!
So what have I to tempt you to buy?
Contemporary ebook romances
Set in Largs, a small Scottish seaside resort, it tells the story of Maisie, a successful businesswoman approaching her 40th birthday and wondering what’s missing from her life. Will she find it in the quiet town of Largs or is Glasgow a better bet? Is James the answer or is Lenny?
Young Aussie lass Jill arrives in Edinburgh in Festival time, keen to explore the city and the country. But her next door neighbour, Andrew, seems set on spoiling her plans, especially when she discovers he’s also her boss. Can she still achieve her goals despite Mr Bossy, as she calls him, apparently out to thwart them?
Memoir
A Scottish Childhood; Growing up a Baby Boomer 
My father, a keen amateur photographer, took loads of photos of us as children. I’ve collected the articles I wrote for the late, lamented magazine, Scottish Memories, on growing up after the Second World War and put them together as a snapshot of life in the West of Scotland in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Writing for Children
This is a collection of stimulating and vivid stories and poems originally written for the BBC children’s programmes, but with a difference. The children, themselves, are the illustrators. There are pages for them to do their own drawings of what happens in the stories. It’s so important nowadays to give children the opportunity to develop their own imaginations rather than have it fed by computer games, TV and animations.
Short Stories
A selection of prize-winning short stories which illustrate my tagline ‘writer of many things’. From a war-torn country to a city in the near future trying to survive economic disaster, to an inept Glasgow private eye, and a fantasy concerning Scotland’s Robert Burns and a determined fan in a pleated skirt, there’s something for everybody in this eclectic mix.
So buy a book and make everybody happy this Christmas!
When I was a child we used to play a game, My Granny went on holiday and in her suitcase she packed... each person would add an item, the sillier the better, to the list for the next person to remember. Eventually, as the list grew longer and full of unusual things, people would get knocked out of the game as they forgot items or had them in the wrong order.
I am at present, living out of two suitcases, while we wait for our new home to be ready. Their contents closely resemble those of the game. I packed those suitcases at the end of April just after the storm nicknamed the ‘Beast from the East’ because of its Siberian origins, had covered the country in feet of crisp white snow and ice. The countryside was quite beautiful if you didn’t have to go places, had plenty of food and heat and were not in need of medical assistance.
In my mind as well, was last year’s disastrous summer with heavy rain, temperatures far below normal and little sunshine. On top of all that, we had a wedding in Iceland to pack for, with the service taking place outdoors at the foot of a glacier.
Not required at this stage of the journey.
So, in my suitcase I packed… thermal underwear, numerous thick woolly polo neck sweaters, two heavy jackets with hoods, knitted hat, scarf and gloves, waterproof trousers, sturdy walking shoes, a rain poncho and a hot water bottle. And what happens? We have the longest, driest, hottest spell of sunny weather in decades!
I had to head for the sales and buy a couple of cheap t-shirts so that I had something to wear without dying of heat exhaustion.
My Work in Progress (WIP) is in a similar state to my suitcases – full of stuff that I don’t actually need at the moment. I have written around 10,00 words and have ground to a halt. Why? Because I have crammed in loads of situations and backstory and details I might use at a later date but which are simply tangling up the story at the moment. I don’t know what direction to take my WIP next. Should I follow A’s problem which involves B not knowing about C but has a mystery at its source? Or what about Z who hates C but is in love secretly with W although he is married to B? And what of M who has suddenly appeared on page 19 but fits in nowhere that I can envisage?
All this is going on and I have only reached chapter 4.
When I finally move into our new home, I shall unpack the contents of my suitcases and hang them in wardrobes or stash them in cupboards until such time as I need them again. I’ll know where they are and can easily bring them out to use when the weather requires them. Similarly with my WIP I shall cut away all the extraneous complications, but won’t consign them to the trash can. I’ll keep them safely in a file marked KEEP until I reach a point in the story when I know they will have the maximum impact and will earn their place in the book. Then I shall introduce them into the action and watch while my characters react to the new situation I have created to stir them up.
No doubt at that time my woolly sweaters and hats will also be called into service as the year creeps towards its end and the hot weather is far in the past.
As my granny used to say, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.’
To everything there is a season….
It’s exciting when Publication Day arrives. After weeks, months, even years of hard work the great day comes at last and The Book is finally out there! Will it sell? Will the reviewers like it? Where will it be on Amazon rankings?
The important thing for an author to remember is that people’s tastes differ – fortunately – as what one person loves in a book, another hates. And I’m the same. Some books I devour with a great deal of pleasure, others I give up on after only a few pages. So some reviewers will give it a resounding 5 stars while others, more circumspect, award 3 or 4 and there’s always some idiot that you’ll vow to hate for life who hands out a measly singleton.
So what of Love Begins at 40? It’s about Maisie, approaching her fortieth birthday with some trepidation. She’s a successful businesswoman in Glasgow, who, in order to have better life-work balance, buys a holiday flat in Largs, a seaside resort on the west coast of Scotland. There she meets James dealing with his own difficulties in life. But they are attracted to each other. Can they overcome their problems, make some hard decisions and end up happily ever after?
Read it and see!
ann burnett 