Monday 30 May 2011

Thomas Hope & the Regency style - Victoria and Albert Museum

Thomas Hope & the Regency style - Victoria and Albert Museum


                 

                       The conservatory steps

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Writing Awards

Thames Valley Writers' Circle is a supportive and energetic group that welcomes anyone who wants to write - in any genre and at any level. And as a bonus, we regularly invite members to contribute to an anthology which our webmaster patiently and painstakingly crafts into an attractive book.
This year our new anthology: 'Pick and Mix: a mouth-watering selection' was entered into the national competition run by Writers' News and the David St John Thomas Charitable Trust.
To our delight, it won first prize [from thirty entries]. To our even greater delight, it was also judged to be the 'Winner of Winners' overall in the competition, which consisted of fiction, non-fiction, self-published books, poetry, young adult and children's books, as well as anthologies.



Thursday 5 May 2011

Lily of the valley



In the language of flowers, the lily of the valley signifies the return of happiness. Legend tells of the affection of a lily of the valley for a nightingale that did not come back to the woods until the flower bloomed in May.

On 1st May, traditionally, women sell bunches of lily of the valley in the streets of French towns. Young men buy them to give to their sweethearts.

Saturday 23 April 2011

23rd April : Dragons and maidens...and St George

Y Ddraig Goch
This dragon is a symbol to fire the heart of anyone with Welsh blood in their veins. Here he is "passant" in heraldic terms, signifying greeting and [maybe] welcome. Of course he welcomes you in. Why not? He can eat you later.
The Welsh dragon is a Celtic symbol of great age and its origins are lost in legend. It is said that Romano-Welsh soldiers used the red dragon on their flag in the Fourth Century. The dragon is also tied into the legend of King Arthur - his father was Uther Pendragon. This dragon is a symbol to unite people [except maybe at Twickenham for the rugby...]

What a contrast with the loathsome monster of general folklore. From all corners of the world, tales represent dragons as evil, heartless beasts, seeking a bed of treasure to sleep on. Here they will slumber for up to a thousand years. But let anyone invade their lair, and they will strike in terrible revenge, killing a village or so and carrying off maidens to devour at their leisure.

In comes St George, cast forever as the fearless slayer of dragons. In this picture, he is in time to save the maiden.  There's a story in here.



Happy St George's Day, everyone and everywhere. Let all your dragons [bar Welsh ones] be slain.

Friday 8 April 2011

Chapter 9 - the magic chapter

It's happened again, hurrah! When I start writing a new story, I know what my characters look like and roughly how they will act. It's no good planning in too much detail, because they never stick to my original ideas. Chapter 1 is an easy one to write, setting events and relationships in play. Then things move along according to the plan - but oh, how hard it is. These people are as cold as ice, hiding all their secrets and plans. Why won't they interact with more feeling? Why are their actions so quickly told?  Where is the emotion?

I've learned to persevere, coax them all through their scenes and wait for that breakthrough.... And at last it comes. And it's nearly always in Chapter 9 that the veils fall away. They become real people, and reveal the good and bad elements to their character. Suddenly I feel part of their world and they let me join in and follow their ambitions, emotions, phobias, whatever. It's often at this point that they bring in completely new characters that I have to accept because they are obviously essential to the story.

It's definitely the point at which I lose control but as always, this is a wonderful moment.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

The romantic hero and his appearance

Recently I asked in a blog discussion what a romantic hero's qualities should be. The answers came back : he should have integrity, honesty, courage, loyalty, compassion, kindness. In addition he needs a sense of humour and should be fierce and passionate.

How do we picture our hero when we write or read a novel? If we give him some or most of the above qualities, do we want them to be hidden by a moody exterior or do we want our hero to stride across the pages, straight-backed, fiercely gazing at his foes or merrily facing his troubles with a carefree front? Shall we add faults, weaknesses for him to overcome, a problem with his character, an unattractive appearance or maybe an external difficulty such as poverty to test him? And is our hero aware that he is a romantic hero?

Georgette Heyer had her tongue firmly in her cheek when she wrote in 'Devil's Cub' that the prim Frederick Comyn "cherished a love for the romantic, which the Marquis of Vidal, a very figure of romance, quite lacked."

It's tricky to give a precise description of a character when you are writing a novel. We all have our own idea of beauty and want to project that onto the hero in the story we are reading. Only Colin Firth has been [almost] universally accepted as Mr Darcy.  But we're each of us entitled to draw inspiration from the type of man we prefer - and isn't it a good job we all like different physical types!!
Here are some of the guys who help me create a hero for a story.






             Guess I rather like dark hair in a hero.... but notice I put Sean Bean at the top.