My A - Z of Books

It's always interesting to be set a new reading challenge and thanks to 

Portobello Book Blog

I spotted this one on Book Connectors on Facebook.

My A-Z of Books

Author you've read the most books from...



Diana Gabaldon - I've been hooked on her Outlander series since 1991. I'm eagerly awaiting book number 9 in the series.

Book 8 - Written in My Own Heart's Blood was published in 2014 and as it's usually 4 or 5 years between books , I've got a while to wait !

My original 1991 copy is falling to pieces but I love it. But just to be safe, I have multiple copies of Outlander ,including a precious,  signed 20th anniversary edition.

Best Sequel Ever...

Dragonfly in Amber - Book two in the Outlander series, after this I was well and truly hooked and began my long love affair with Jamie Fraser...

Currently Reading...


This Must Be The Place is published on the 17th May







Drink of Choice when reading...

Darjeeling tea, piping hot, milk, no sugar and usually in  cat mug. This cup and saucer is from Ikea...

E-Reader or Physical book...

I'm a bit of both. Nothing will ever take the place of the look, feel and smell of a paper book but my kindle is enormously useful when my eyes are tired and I need bigger print.

Fictional character you probably would have dated in high school

Jon Snow from Game of Thrones - he is seriously cute !

Glad you gave this book a chance...

The Scottish religious reformer John Knox,  never figured highly on my list of historical figures to learn more about, but The First Blast of the Trumpet by Marie Macpherson absolutely captured my imagination. It ripples with rich Scottish vernacular...

Hidden gem book...

The Flax Flower by Amanda Maclean - I reviewed this for the Historical Novel Society. It's an independently published book by a Scottish author, based on the old ballad Mill O Tifty's Annie. It's contents are a hidden gem...

Important moment in your reading life...

Reading my first Jean Plaidy historical novel in my early teens and realising that history didn't need to be stuffy and boring...

Just finished...

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

Kind of books you won't read...


I'm not a Sci Fi or Westerns reader and I'm easily bored by Erotica




Longest Book You've Read...


Voyager comes in at a  whopping 1059 pages 

Major book Hangover...

Realising just how many books.... and how many pages there are to get through in The Song Of Ice and Fire series

Number of book cases you own...

Six and desperately need more. So a major refurbishment of my study and the purchase of several Ikea 'Billy Bookcases' is planned for the summer...

One book you've read multiple times...

Jane Eyre is the one of the classics I love to re-read - I've lost count just how many times I've read it..

"Reader....I married him..." 

Preferred place to read...


It's always lovely to read in the garden on a sunny afternoon

Quote that inspires you/Gives you all the feels from a book you've read...

This says it all...

“For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary” 

Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

Reading Regret...

That I'll never have the time to read all the books I have on my book shelves...

Series you started and need to finish...


A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin - I'm still on Book One - Game of Thrones, so it's a work in progress...

Three of your all time favourite reads..

Popular fiction comes and goes but these classics are always in my top three...

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• To Kill  Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Unapologetic fan girl for...

The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon

Very excited for this release more than all others...


Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton is my next read on my Kindle from NetGalley  - I can't wait !!

Due to be published in June 2016

Worst Bookish Habit...

Having several books on the go at once and being impatient to move on to the next read....

X marks the spot: Start on the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book...


The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer

Your Latest Purchase...


The Day I Lost You by Fionnuala Kearney

Zzzzz snatcher Book ( Last book that kept you up way too late)


In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings

So that's it, folks, my A-Z of Books Choices


Would love to see yours, so do tag me if you do it so I can see your choices



Have fun !



~***~

My guest author today is ....Margaret Skea

I am delighted to welcome back to Jaffareadstoo

Margaret Skea

Margaret's Second Novel



A House Divided is Published today

Sanderling Books
15 October 2015

Margaret talks about writing the sequel to an award-winning debut novel. The pressures, the problems, the pitfalls and the process, including the all-important editing. And ultimately the pleasure (and relief) of seeing her second novel finally make it onto the bookshop shelf.

The Dreaded Sequel.

Turn of the Tide, my debut novel, had, as with many first novels, a long gestation period, so it was with great excitement (and considerable trepidation) that I approached the book launch, held in Waterstones Bookshop in Edinburgh.  It was a wonderful evening, full to bursting point with not just family and friends, but also total strangers who had picked up tickets in the shop. The publisher provided refreshments, everyone, including me, was relaxed, and walking down the stairs and seeing my book piled high on the signing table was an experience I will always remember.  And with a great audience I even managed to enjoy reading and answering questions.

I’d always intended the book to be part of a series and so, once the first flurry of excitement was over it was time to get back to work.

With the first book mainstream published, an option on the second and the plot for it already partially outlined, producing a sequel should have been straightforward – right?

Wrong!

I’ve heard folk say that the second book is hardest to write – I certainly hope so – for I wouldn’t want No 3 or 4 to prove as difficult as No 2 has been.  ‘Second-child syndrome’ springs to mind – prickly, difficult, hard to rear…

What were the pressures?

Well for starters, the first book was very well received. Not a problem you might think. But for me it was. Although I always hoped Turn of the Tide would be published, there were never any guarantees and so I’d primarily written it to please myself. Now I found that I had a whole new group of people to please, namely the readers who’d enjoyed the first book and wanted to read more. So I found myself worrying whether they’d be happy with what I was doing with and to the characters, especially ones that they liked.   That was a tough barrier to overcome.

Then there was the fear that I wouldn’t be able to match the first book in terms of the quality, cadences and tone of the writing, something I found very hard to assess. It took a beta-reader who read it after it was completely finished, to set my mind at rest on that score.

And as for the plot. Although I had a partial outline, I didn’t know how the book was going to end, nor in fact at what point in my fictional family’s history I should begin. That was very uncomfortable because for Turn of the Tide I had known from Day 1 what the climactic scene would be and so had a goal to aim for. 

There were practical problems too – when I was about one third of the way through the first draft circumstances meant that I had to stop writing completely for almost a year.  Once things had settled down again I found it very difficult to pick up the thread of the story, and even more importantly, it had become impossible to work at home.

Enter a ‘good fairy’ in the shape of a person that I didn’t know, but whom, having overheard me at a writers’ event telling a friend that I wished I could maroon myself on a desert island, immediately offered me the keys to a remote, almost empty cottage, to use as much as I liked.  And what a fantastic gift that was. Within a day or twoeach time I  drove up the single track road to the cottage I found my brain reacting to the journey by clicking over into writing mode - Pavlov’s dogs style.

Three-quarters of the way through the book I was thrown another curved ball, in the form of advice from a London literary agent, who suggested I re-think the idea of a trilogy and finish the story in the second book.  Perhaps it was a good thing that I hadn’t my mind set on a particular ending, because as a result of that advice the story took a new turn.

If the pressures and the problems were new, the process was familiar.  While writing the first draft I tried to discipline myself not to stop to fact-check. Instead if there were historical details I wasn’t sure of I typed in red, so that they would stand out during editing.

I had done a lot of edits of Turn of the Tide - seven to be precise, so I was expecting that part of the process to be lengthy.  In the end it was the one thing that I found much easier second time round, though I approached it in a very similar way.  First the factual edit, sorting out all the red-pen sections, then macro editing for the story arc and drama; followed by a series of micro-edits  - looking at punctuation and repetitions; and a final trim to get rid of words that added nothing to either the story or the writing style. (I took out more than 300 occurrences of ‘that’ and didn’t miss any of them!)

  

As for the pitfalls – for me there are two main ones, but I suspect these are true of many authors.

The first is the internet – wonderful as it can be, I need to switch it off when I’m writing, otherwise the temptation to browse would mean I’d get no work done at all!

The second issue is promotion. In an ideal world I’d just write, and someone else would do the promotion bit, but sadly publishers now expect all but the most well-known authors to become involved. Not that I’d mind a world book signing tour! but I hate the (very un-British) concept that everyone you meet is a potential customer.  Hopefully I can get the balance right.

But amidst all the pressures and problems there is also pleasure. My husband has been enormously supportive throughout, and as chief cook over the last few months his culinary skills have increased exponentially. Something I suspect I shall continue to exploit! I was taken completely by surprise both by the strength of my emotions when I finished the first draft – a mix of euphoria and relief that is hard to describe - and the excitement I felt when my paperback copies arrived, and I knew for sure that the bookshop would have them in time for the launch. (It has been a close run thing…)

And the future? I will be starting to write another historical novel very soon - there are lots of ideas fighting it out in my head. Munro may not have finished with me yet.

You can follow Margaret via her website – www.margaretskea.com

Or on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MargaretSkeaAuthor.Novels

Her books are available in all good bookshops in the UK and online via Amazon as both paperback and e-book.

Turn of the Tide http://tiny.cc/v5dg3x

A House Divided http://tiny.cc/s4xp2x

Huge thanks to Margaret for giving us such an insight into the writing of the Dreaded Sequel !

Jaffa and I wish you continued success with A House Divided.

Sanderling Books
15 October 2015

~***~

**Around the World Blog Tour with Trip Fiction and #Book Connectors** and Margaret Skea

TripFiction was created to make it easy to match a location with a book and help you select good literature that is most pertinent and relevant to your trip. A resource for armchair and actual travellers, it is a unique way of exploring a place through the eyes of an author. We blog, and chat books and travel across Social Media, and love to meet authors and bloggers as we take our literary journey.

Trip Fiction

Book Connectors  was created as a place on Facebook for Bloggers, Authors and small Publishers to share their news.

We encourage book promotions; information about competitions and giveaways; news of events, including launch events, signings, talks or courses. Talk about new signings, about film deals .... anything really.

Book Connectors is a friendly group, there are no rules or guidelines - just be polite and respectful to each other.

You can find Book Connectors on Facebook

 I am delighted to be part of this Around the World Blog Tour starting in 

Scotland

~And with huge pleasure I introduce my guest on the blog ~

Margaret Skea

Margaret has won or been placed in quite a number of short story competitions including Neil Gunn, Fish, Mslexia, Historical Novel Society. She now loves writing full length fiction and was thrilled to be awarded the Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time Author Award for her debut novel, Turn of the Tide. 

Turn of the Tide

Set in 16th Century Scotland Munro owes allegiance to the Cunninghames and to the Earl of Glencairn. Trapped in the 150-year-old feud between the Cunninghames and the Montgomeries, he escapes the bloody aftermath of an ambush, but he cannot escape the disdain of the wife he sought to protect, or his own internal conflict. He battles with his conscience and with divided loyalties and to age-old obligations, to his wife and children, and, most dangerous of all, to a growing friendship with the rival Montgomerie clan. Intervening to diffuse a quarrel that flares between a Cunninghame cousin and Hugh Montgomerie, he succeeds only in antagonizing William, the arrogant and vicious Cunninghame heir. And antagonizing William is a dangerous game to play...

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

A House Divided

The sequel to Turn of the Tide, it continues the story of the fictional Munro family, trapped in a notorious vendetta in 16th century Scotland.

Eleven years on from the Massacre of Annock, the Cunninghame / Montgomerie  truce is fragile. For the Munro family, living in hiding under assumed names, these are dangerous times.

While Munro risks his life daily in the service of the French King, the spectre of discovery by William Cunninghame haunts his wife Kate. Her fears for their children and her absent husband realized as William’s desire for revenge tears their world apart.

A sweeping tale of compassion and cruelty, treachery and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of feuding clans, a religious war, and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.

*****

I'm delighted that Margaret has chosen to share her love of Scotland with us .....

Confession time. Although my main focus at the moment is writing Scottish historical fiction, I’m not a Scot.  And despite having been married to a Scot for 36 years and having lived in Scotland for 33 of those 36, I’m still regarded as a ‘blow-in’ ie a foreigner.  (In case you’re counting, I was a child bride, well, close anyway).

But my love of Scotland goes much further back than my marriage – right back in fact to a caravanning holiday when I was 12. How could I forget my dad trying to negotiate Highland roads - single track with passing places almost long enough for the average car - while towing a caravan. Taking a wrong turn meant unhitching the caravan to turn it by hand while a stream of long-suffering locals built up behind us.

Passing Place

As an adult I appreciate the grandeur of the mountains and the fabulous scenery. As a child it was the silence that captivated me: the eerie atmosphere of the remote valleys, the dark lochs lying silent and undisturbed brooded over by ruinous castles that set my imagination aflame and sent me scurrying to my local library to devour every book I could find, both fiction and non- fiction, that focused on Scotland. From Mary Queen of Scots to Montrose, from the Highland Clearances to the Massacre of Glencoe, from Macbeth to Bonnie Prince Charlie, heroes and villains, I loved them all.

Loch Awe

But neither of my novels – Turn of the Tide and its forthcoming sequel  A House Divided feature kilted highlanders, or indeed any of the iconic figures of Scottish history. Instead I have chosen to focus on a period and people and places that most readers won’t have heard of before. How I came to focus on the ‘Ayrshire Vendetta’, a 150 year feud between two families in South-West Scotland, is another story, one which has its roots in Ulster, not Scotland, but to a large extent it is the setting of the Scottish Borders that inspires and informs my writing.

My main character, Munro, is a minor laird, and it wasn’t hard to find a prototype for his house, for the area in which I live is littered with tower houses – rather gaunt and forbidding dwellings, built more for defence than comfort and generally in inaccessible positions. Munro’s home is an amalgam of the two closest to me – Greenknowe, though ruinous, retains enough of the walls to provide an interesting exterior - it is the basis for the cover of my second book.

Greenknowe

                               

Smailholm is complete and allowed me to experience what it would be like to sit by the fireside in the hall, or peer out through the narrow window slits; how much breath it takes to climb up the slope to the tower, or to run up the spiral stair. It gave me the length and breadth and particularly the height of rooms, a sense both of the narrowness of their existence and the pleasure that the rare opportunity to sit at leisure within the shelter of the barmkin on a sunny day might provide.

A major feature of the history of our area is the legacy of the reivers – this panel, part of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, which I was privileged to help stitch -  illustrates a core feature of their lifestyle. Violent men for whom family and loyalty were all important, they rode out on wild, windy nights to steal sheep and rustle cattle from their neighbours … and worse. Suffice it to say the words ‘bereave’ and ‘blackmail’ have their origins in the reivers’ activities.

Reivers from the Great Tapestry of Scotland

Nowadays each town has a festival centred around rideouts to out-lying villages and places of particular significance. Large numbers of riders, in some cases as many as 400, take part and those elected as festival principals must lead all the rides. One of my earliest memories of moving to the Borders is of standing in a field on the edge of a village, hearing the distant thunder of hooves and watching as around 130 horses and riders appeared over the brow of the hill, heading straight for us. Hardly surprising then that, although the majority of my characters are historical, Munro, my fictional main character, rode into my head one day on his mare, Sweet Briar, almost a character in her own right.

Common Riding

The landscape of the Borders is just as beautiful and as wild as the Highlands, though on a smaller scale.

Our hills are rolling, punctured by outcrops of rock, smothered in spring and summer by a riot of colour as first gorse and then heather springs into bloom. The moors are bleak, lonely places, criss-crossed by hidden streams and boggy ground making it treacherous underfoot for travellers whether on horse or foot.

While I was training for a charity walk on the Great Wall of China I spent many days walking the Eildons, rough terrain that gave me a real feel for what travel in the 16^th century  would have been like.

Gorse

Eildons

Some of the action in both my novels takes place in Edinburgh and I’m fortunate that it is only just over an hour’s drive from me. Some of my most enjoyable research involved wandering up and down the Royal Mile, where if I closed my eyes I could imagine the street lined with luckenbooths*  and hear the stall-holders crying their wares. And if I needed a little extra help in that I could visit Mary King’s Close– part of the medieval city, buried under the existing town, and Gladstone’s Land – a merchant’s house of the period. It was in Gladstone’s Land that I found a medieval baby-walker, almost identical to the one I had for my own children, except that it was wooden rather than metal. That was a detail that I just had to fit into my story somehow!

*Luckenbooths are covered booths or stalls which can be locked.

Mary King's Close

One of the tasks of an historical novelist when writing about people who actually existed is to find out as much information from the historical records as possible about them. In my first novel I broke that rule when writing about one character about whom I knew very little, yet instinctively making him one of my primary villains. Imagine my excitement when, during the editing process, I went to his home, Newark  castle, to check what could be seen from the windows of the Great Hall,  and discovered that in real life he was much more villainous than I had painted him, having gained notoriety as a wife-beater. That really was a ‘eukeka’ moment.

Newark Castle

I have travelled to many of the locations in my novels, scrambling up to stumps of castles, driving the routes that my characters take as the action unfolds, stopping wherever and whenever I can to take pictures to pin up on my notice board to refresh my memory as I write. But landscape isn’t a static thing and  many features change over time: river courses alter, deepen in some places, silt up in others, so an additional challenge is to try to understand what a landscape might have looked like all those years ago. In my second novel my main character hides in a cave system beside a river, but these are now some 12 metres above the water due to the excavation of the gorge by the river.

 Though nothing can beat visiting the locations in my books, it isn’t always possible and when I can’t get to a particular location I spend hours pouring over maps, both modern and ancient – particular favourites are those drawn by Timothy Pont, many of which survive in the National Library of Scotland. It is Pont’s map of Ayrshire that forms the basis for the maps in the front of both my novels, and I’m grateful to the NLS for giving their permission.

Living in such an atmospheric and lovely environment, perhaps it’s not surprising that the part of writing I most enjoy is description, even of weather – and in Scotland we certainly get plenty of that!

All photographs by kind permission ©Margaret Skea

*****

I first discovered Margaret's excellent historical novel Turn of the Tide when in November 2011, I watched the Alan Titchmarsh show, always a favourite programme of mine in the afternoons, and I learned about Margaret's involvement in the People's Novelist Competition, in which she was a finalist in the historical fiction category.

Turn of the Tide appealed to my love of historical fiction , firstly because of its Scottish setting, but also because it was about a set of warring families living within a harsh environment and with their own unique moral code. The story is evocative and atmospheric and really brings to life the inherent danger of living within the Scottish clan system of the mid part of the sixteenth century. Based on the true, and it must be said, violent feud between the Cunninghame's and the Montgomeries, the story literally abounds with skulduggery, political conflict and a real sense of rivalry between two stubbornly fierce adversaries.

It's beautifully descriptive, with a real sense of history and conjures sixteenth century Scotland in a such a glorious way that allows time and place to truly come alive in your imagination..

You can find Margaret on her website
Follow her on Facebook
Twitter @margaretskea1



Huge  thanks to Margaret for sharing her love of Scotland so eloquently and to #BookConnectors and @Trip fiction for the invitation to join this exciting Blog Tour around Scotland.

Do follow #BookConnectors on Twitter to discover more authors sharing their love of all things Scottish

~***~