This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
Happy New Year, Readers!
Because we're in a new year, I'm trying to be super-organised. There are so many things going on, I have to keep tabs on everything! So here's what is planned...
This year for #HistFicThursdays, I am opening up a space every month for a fellow Historical Fiction writer to share a guest post. This opportunity is open on a first-come-first-serve basis, so please get in touch if you are interested in having a guest post.
Each month, there will also be a free historical short story or poem, across a broad range of times and genres. There'll be one or two book tour posts, too, and I'm also aiming to write a post about the inspirations for aspects of different books. So, if it all goes according to plan, it will be a very busy year of #HistFicThursdays!
To start off the inspirational posts, here's a quick introduction to my new release. It's not Historical Fiction, but it is all about the inspiration for the story I wrote in NaNoWriMo last year.
Meet the Stempster Stones!
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| The Stempster Dragon |
While clearing a pile of stones which had been dug out of the garden, I kept one or two aside because they had interesting patterns or shapes on them. After swilling them in water and applying a lot of gentle brushing, shapes began to appear. I contacted Treasure Trove Scotland who, very nicely, told me the human marks on the stone were not enough to suggest it had any real archaeological value. That said, I couldn't stop seeing shapes in them, so Dad suggested I wrote a book encouraging young adventurers to spot these patterns, whether they were ancient marks or nature's artistry.
So that was exactly what I did! Pictures in Stone: Early Artists or Natural Wonders? launched yesterday. It's full of fun and creative challenges and activities for young archaeologists. One of the challenges is to create a story inspired by one of the stones, just like I did in NaNoWriMo. My end product was The Stonemason's Crown, which is the first of what I hope will be a number of books set across the ages and all set right here at Stempster.
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| Who's this saintly chap? |
I'm in the process of creating a complete Here in the Middle of Nowhere brand, based around our house here in Caithness. There are not just stories, but artworks too, including some taken directly from the patterns on these stones. These can be found on my Redbubble shop.
For Christmas, Clemency bought me a metal print of the LiDAR image of our property. There are all sorts of exciting marks around the land! And these are all going to weave their way into my stories too - although possibly not the septic tank!
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| Is it a bear? Is it a dog? |
None of these pictures have been tweaked by the way. I would love to hear about your garden treasure finds, and what - if anything - you have ever unearthed which has inspired you to write a certain piece of work. If you've never thought about this before, I guarantee you will never look at a stone in the same way!
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| A Knight with a Microphone?! |
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