My 2019

This is the time when we look back as well as forward. 

2019 was not my best year - but by no means my worst. The worst thing was in March when a bit of spring sunshine beckoned me into the garden where I fell and broke my wrist. Okay, it was my left wrist and because I am right-handed, I was not too incapacitated. But what a palaver. An operation, one night in hospital and a plaster cast for what seemed like forever followed by weeks of physiotherapy. Not fun for me apart from the kindness, friendliness and expertise of all the doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, radiologists et al in our beleaguered NHS. 

What were the good things? My family comes first. I do not like to plaster my public blog with photos of my two grandchildren but just to say both are the best, of course. Both attend a lovely school that reminds of the one I went to school. Isaac is doing brilliantly in his number-work (well, he would be as both parents are maths graduates, his father employed in digital technology and his mum a secondary school maths teacher!) They all put me to shame. I realise now, after many years, that I have some sort of dyscalculia. It is said that the condition goes together with dyslexia but in my case, I, fortunately, have no problem with letters although both were helped in my 1950s primary school days when we have daily times-table learning, a weekly mental arithmetics test ("mental arithmetic weak" - as wrote my first maths teacher at secondary school in a report) and a weekly spelling test, plus a poem to learn and recite in front of the class. How awful it seems now but that's what school was back then. He is also a good runner and usually does well in his regular Junior Park Runs. I had a detailed discussion with him about the reasons the dinosaurs might have died out in a science-fiction context. He's 6 years old. Amazing. 

Athena is 3 and loving the nursery class at the same school. She is fearless, bright and bubbly and I'm sure will excel as a runner and gymnast - so different from me! She also has inherited the Zigmond hair - which is curly and being a girl, her mum makes the most of it, fortunately, me. It thrills me every time I see it.

Onto my writing. As everyone who writes knows, it's a roller-coaster ride of rejections and acceptances. In 2019, several of my short stories published and some have won prizes. 

To my delight, my novella, Chasing Angels, about a real pioneering female mountain climber, first published in paperback by the excellent Biscuit Publishing, now no longer available, was published this year digitally by Endeavour Media.

Even more excitingly, The Conrad Press will publish my novel The Lark Ascending in February 2020. I am mainly a historical novelist but have no particular period I stick to, although I am an expert on the history and development of the 19th-century bustle! My new novel is set between 1919 and 1926 and The General Strike which divided a country that was even more divided politically than today. You're fed up with politics? I don't blame you but this novel is a love story, as well as about female empowerment.

Leeds 1919. The war is over but young Alice Fields, who hates her job in an old-fashioned shop, isn’t celebrating. However, her life is about to change when a rich customer leaves behind an expensive fur stole and Alice makes great efforts to return it. Dark secrets bring not only money but misery, too. During the contrasting worlds of the roaring twenties and the General Strike, love and deep friendships bloom like poppies on the devastated battlefields over which the lark rises again.

I'll do a cover-reveal soon but this is where I leave my blog until 2020. I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a healthy and happy new year. See you soon and I shall leave you with a traditional Christmas scene.