Choices

Well I am having a breather from my WIP. I have finished another draft and it is currently with a couple of readers (thanks Misha and Kathy).

A bit of time on my hands I have to decide what to work on next.

My main choices are:

• ·         The third book in my Veiled series. This project is about a third to a half written because I split my second in two.
• ·         Or, beginning work on my other WIP that is waiting in the wings.

The new WIP is called “Hilda”. I mentioned it a little while ago,

I said then “it is built around the life of a young woman named Hilda born in the late 19th Century.  Hilda's story follows her life from her youth in an English village, the start of her working life in service at the local estate, meeting and loving a young soldier during World War I and her life into the mid-20th Century and beyond.  My idea is to look at the challenges facing a person through those years and to look at the vast changes that occurred during this period through her eyes.”

I still need to do more research on early 20^th century Warwickshire but I couldn’t help myself and began writing a first scene on the train into work this morning.

What do you think?

The scene I wrote this morning 

 Hilda

1910

 ‘Ginnie!’, Hilda tried to ignore her mother’s voice drifting up from below, ‘Ginnie, have you seen that sister of yours?’

‘Which one Mum?’ replied Ginnie’s voice from nearer at hand. Hilda sighed and closed her most secret possession - a leather bound notebook Miss Wilson had given her. A notebook that was filling up all too quickly with tiny characters in her spidery hand. She sighed again and looked around the attic where she had found a moment’s refuge. Low, cramped and dark, but a neat clean space, dry and filled almost to bursting with shelves laden with jars of preserves and ceramic wine jars.

Hilda climbed off the lid of her glory box she had been using as a bench. Popping the end of her pencil stub in her mouth and tucking the book under arm she lifted the box’s heavy cedar lid. With a little effort she slid the book under the linen she was collecting against the eventuality she might one day be married. The book slid on top of the algebra book Miss Wilson had lent her, finally she tucked the pencil stub in next to them.

Her mother’s voice came up the stair again,‘Hilda of course! Dolly is with me!’

‘Her went up the ladder to the attic a while ago.’

‘Hilda!’ her mother’s voice was louder now, directed at her, ‘Are you up there?’

‘Yes mum!’

‘You come down here this instant!’

Hilda carefully closed the lid to the chest and cast her eye over the attic again. Her cedar chest was one of three at the near end of the attic. One of three made by her father, a master cabinet maker, one for each of his daughters. Hilda clumped down the ladder to the upper floor of Wharf Cottage. Her elder sister Ginnie looked up from where she was tucking fresh sheets into the corner of one of the beds in the bedroom, ‘What do you do up there all this time?’

‘Nothing much.’

Ginnie fourteen, and a full two years older than Hilda took on the older sister’s role, ‘You know it makes Mum cross when you sneak away.’

‘I know.’ Hilda sighed again, ‘I’d better see what she wants.’

Elizabeth Attewell was in her kitchen, a flour covered apron around her ample middle. Dolly, Hilda’s lanky ten year old sister was part way through rolling out dough for pie crust. ‘Well Hilda Attewell, where do you think I have been?’

With a sinking spirit Hilda guessed the answer, ‘Out to the laundry?’

‘Yes my girl, I’ve been out to the laundry, and what do you think I found out there?’

‘Our Wilf?’ Hilda said hopefully.

Elizabeth pursed her lips, ‘I found the copper full of warm water and the fire beneath it gone out. How are we to wash the bed sheets you and Ginnie stripped earlier without hot water?’

‘I’m sorry, Mum only Wilf said he’d watch the fire while I just…’

‘While you just what?’

Hilda felt tears starting to pool in her eyes, there was nothing for it but the truth. ‘Miss Wilson.’

‘What has that woman done now?’

‘She lent me an algebra book at the start of the holidays.’

‘Algebra? What is algebra when it is at home?’

‘Maths, mum hard maths. I’ve been working through it.’ Elizabeth watched as her daughter’s eyes began to shine, ‘I got stuck on a difficult problem, I’ve been thinking about it for days, I just thought of how to work it through.’

It was hard to be angry with such eagerness, but truly the girl was wasting her time, ‘While you were upstairs playing with your numbers your Dad called Wilfred away to help him cut grass for the rabbits. And why do you think a six year old was going to stay put to watch your fire for you?’

Hilda’s excitement puffed out like a blown out candle, the tears came back. ‘I’m sorry Mum, I only meant to be a minute.’

‘I know you love your numbers, but you know what I think about that. You will be going into service next year when you finish your schooling. What blessed use is algebra going to be to a scullery maid?’

Hilda swallowed back the tears, ‘None.’

‘Exactly! Now you listen to me girl, you go and set that fire again. You will stay in that laundry until that water boils and you will begin those sheets, and if they aren’t mangled and on the line before tea you will have nothing but bread!’

‘Yes Mum.’

She turned to go, ‘And Hilda!’

‘Yes mum?’

‘If anything like this happens again you will be taking that blessed book straight back to Miss Wilson!’

  Hilda in 1914 aged 16

Thanks, and my WIP

First of all, thank you all for your kind words about my Mum.

She says she has improved again today, and will go in to town to see her doctor tomorrow.

To say I am relieved is an understatement!

Changing subject I have managed to get to the end of another draft of my WIP.

As I said a while ago I have split my MS into two books which has meant developing some of my character’s stories more.

In celebration of another milestone here is another section from Petenka’s viewpoint. This is set a year after the scene I shared last time after my characters have been at war for almost a year.

Resignation: Russia - May 1942

Petenka Bykova

‘I hate to say it, but I don’t see how we can survive until the end.’

My words dropped into the well of light around a single precious candle that flickered on rough timber walls. The dugout was one we shared with Lena Kominskaya our regimental surgeon. Maybe five years older than us she had been a surgeon at the Moscow orthopaedic hospital before the war.

Svetlana froze, her spoon halfway between her mess-tin and her mouth. Incredulously she asked, ‘Have you really taken that long to think about it?’

‘No, of course not. We did get interrupted earlier.’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’ A click on the rim of the tin as she put down the spoon, ‘It’s an uncomfortable subject to discuss.’

I kept my voice light, ‘Why is it so difficult?’

Her brows knotted, ‘I don’t find it pleasant to contemplate my death.’

‘I don’t worry too much, but I do not believe death is the end.’

‘Because of faith?’

‘Exactly.’

I peered at her through the flickering light. Even with all we had faced she looked as relaxed and as sure of herself as the day we met. I shifted uncomfortably.

Svetlana smiled gently, a knowing smile.

I threw a crust of bread at her, ‘I know, you’re a Communist, you think I’m deluding myself. We don’t need to have that argument again.’

Retrieving the scrap of bread from her shoulder, she flicked it at my head. ‘It doesn’t serve any purpose does it?’

‘Children,’ interjected Lena from the shadow of her bunk, ‘play nicely!’

As Lena went back to the letter she was writing, I felt for the crust and tugged it from where it had caught in my hair. I thought about throwing it again but dropped it on the floor, someone had to feed the poor rats. ‘That argument is tired.’

Sveta frowned, serious again, ‘I asked the question, because I realised how much I was afraid. I thought you must be too.’

‘You’ve been afraid?’

‘How could I not be?’

‘You always seem so calm.’

She looked at me impassively, ‘That’s not how I feel.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘I am terrified of dying. More afraid of being wounded. But…’

‘But?’

‘I am frightened of losing you. Frightened of how I would be if something happened to my Petenka.’

‘Nothing will happen to me.’

‘You don’t really believe that.’

‘I’, suddenly unsure I paused to consider ‘no, I don’t see how we can survive. Yet, somehow I can’t really imagine…’

‘I can, but I don’t want to.’

Strange Dreams

Last night I had a dream that was different to any I have ever had before.
In my waking hours I spend not insignificant amounts of time imagining and building scenes in my WIP.
But last night for the first time ever (at least that I recall) I dreamt I was one of my characters.
Occasionally I have a kind of third person dream where I see myself from outside.

But usually when I dream I am me, Al.

Last night it was different I dreamed from the perspective of one of my characters called Petenka.
To add to the novelty of the experience Petenka is a woman.

I don’t remember dreaming from the perspective of a woman before.
To be sure Petenka is not exactly a “girly” girl having grown up as the eldest of six daughters of a Russian peasant/poacher. But she is most definitely a woman.

I have no problem with putting myself in Petenka’s headspace in the day time, she is one of my POV characters.

But as a dream it was strange. 
I guess it means I have been getting very wrapped up in my writing.

Now, to give a taste of Petenka, a scene just after the German invasion of Russia in 1941.


Shaving: Russia - July 1941

Petenka Bykova
How they wept.

Most young pretty women take great pride in their hair. To suddenly understand they were going to the army barber and their heads would be shaved came as a shock to most of them.
The Communists spent a great deal of effort making people the same, making them conform. To be told new recruits in the Red army were shaved and it made no difference if they were male or female was something I would have expected had I thought about it.
It was no surprise to me and that is the truth of it.

It was a great long hall, maybe a drill hall, with chairs set in two rows of six. No mirrors, but they had arranged the chairs so the two rows faced each other. This made it more difficult for the more sensitive girls because they could envisage what was happening to them through the experience of another.

And in any case we had to stand and watch the others until it was our turn.
I was not over concerned about loosing my hair. My childhood and youth had never left much space for preening.

There were no tears from me.

One other girl was different to most of them, there were no tears from her either as the barber attacked her hair. 
I sat opposite her, she smiled a half smile and cocked her eyebrow at me as if she were sharing a joke. She was enduring the hands of the barbers as well, but what was different was how she approached it. The first strip of her scalp stood out starkly white against her remaining glossy black hair. She shrugged and smiled as her hair fell down her shoulders and on to the floor.

As the barber was finishing she wiggled her eyebrows, 'What about these? If it's to be a clean sweep shouldn't these go too?'
So of course the barber ran his clippers over her brows.
As she left her chair she rubbed her head feeling the strangeness. She raised her voice. 'Come on girls, cheer up! We are going to be soldiers! This is the least we can do for the Russia!'

I made sure I stood next her on the first parade, I wanted to know this girl, wanted to see if she was as singular as she appeared. We stood in a ragged line. The sergeant bellowing at us to stand straight. ‘You are going to be paired up, you will stay in those pairs while you are here and more than likely you will go to your regiments in those pairs. We go along the line. You call out number one and number two. Number ones pair with the two on their left. Is it simple enough? Do you halfwits understand?’
The call went along the line, ‘One’, ‘Two’, ‘One…’
It came to my turn, I called ‘One!’
‘Two!’ she called, we were paired.

I turned to face her, how odd she looked with no hair. Unlike most of the girls she was still pretty with a bald pate, but strange nonetheless. I wondered how I looked to her? I thought I must be even squarer jawed than usual with no hair to soften my cheeks. I spoke first, 'I’m Petenka.'
She smiled warmly, 'Svetlana.'
I gave her a half smile back and we were friends.
It was that easy. 

Running fast to stand still

Just over a year ago I posted about my WIP. At that point I was saying my word count had crept past 100,000.

A year on and I have shared my WIP with a couple of readers.

I cut it from one book into two (which left me with two incomplete books)

Now the first half has grown until it is just over 100,000 words again.

I am enjoying the writing but boy does it seem to inch along sometimes (my day job seems all consuming much of the time).
I feel like the end is in sight but I have been here before.

With the change to two separate books, I suspect I will dump the title. Or rather I will swap it.
My working title has been Veiled in Storms, which followed on from my first book Veiled in Shadows.
The third book in the series was to be Veil of Iron. But the second half of the WIP fits better with Storms.
So I suspect I will have to borrow the third title for number two. So my WIP is now wearing the working title of Veil of Iron.

Which kind of fits because of the subject matter and 1946 (when Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech) falls squarely in the book’s chronology.

Now because I don’t want to disappoint, a piccie of the day

Abandoned Railway Trestle Bridge, Gippsland, Victoria

Potography Hiatus, Writing Bonanza

Well this one was too hard for people.
I guessed when I posted this that people would think "railroad sign".
Like a railroad sign it is a warning sign, but in a very different place.

This is a channel marker in Port Phillip Bay. I took this at the Bellarine Peninsula on the far south-west side of the bay. The Bellarine is near the mouth of the bay close to the city of Geelong.
Melbourne is about 100 km (62 miles) to the north where the Yarra River flows into the bay.
The mountain in the distance is on the far side near Dromana and has the lovely name (I think) Arthur's Seat.

I have taken very few photographs over the past few weeks (the ones of Lilli being the few exceptions)
I have kept my eye out for waterfalls and took this at the Murrindindi river in the central highlands.The semi-hiatus in photography is probably due largely to my putting a lot of creative effort into my writing.

I have finished the next draft of Veiled in Storms. I mentioned a while ago I had read the previous draft to Deb (she liked it).

This week I have been jumping forwards and plotting out books 3 and 4 in the series. Till now they have been very rough ideas, now 3 (working title Veil of Iron) is starting to look like a proper outline.

Well I have given a copy of the current draft Of Veiled in Storms to a friend to read (Cheryl did some copy edits on the first book Veiled in Shadows).

Once I get feedback from her I will put a bit of effort into tidying errors up and then in a month or two probably look for a couple more readers for opinions.

Anyone interested?

A Miscellany

I was looking out the window of the train a fair bit this morning. I usually have my eyes pretty much glued to the screen of my computer to work on my WIP Veiled in Storms. But this morning was cold, close to as cold as it gets in Melbourne. We had our first frost of the season, I had to clean ice off my windscreen so I could drive to the station.

My journey to work starts with a ten minute drive to our nearest station at Hurstbridge. My next hour or so is spent on the train into the heart of Melbourne. On the way in I always get a seat because Hurstbridge is the first station (or last depending which way you are going) on the line.

Normally I write the whole way, with the occasional glance at the other passengers or at the passing scenery. For roughly the first half of the trip the line meanders along one of green areas we are privileged to have in Melbourne. In this case the Diamond Creek Valley (isn’t that an amazing name?). Normally, although the scenery is worth watching I don’t look because writing is more important to me than trees and fields I have seen hundreds of times.

This morning was different the valley was covered with thick white frost and enveloped in mist. So the routine had become almost a different place. Very beautiful and very distracting.

But of course the writerly side of me took over and I began imagining the frost was snow and the mist was a Russian Blizzard. I was half expecting Zhukov’s Siberian troops to come bursting out of the mist riding their tanks as they fought to save Moscow in December 1941. (Anyone want to guess what I am writing about at the moment)

That of course made me think about place. Place is very important in fiction. I’ve never been to Russia or experienced a blizzard so how do I write with authenticity about places and times I have never been to?

I guess there are a number of solutions. One is to take advantage of places you have been. So in my novel Veiled in Shadows I chose to set a scene at a university in Oxford in the UK rather than in Cambridge. I’ve walked the streets in Oxford, I never quite made it to Cambridge. Similarly I’ve seen country around the Black Forest in Germany where another section of the novel is set.

But I’ve never been to Russia, and most of Veiled in Storms takes place there. So in my case it comes down to research. I watch every piece of video of the time and place I can get my hands on. I look at maps (period if possible) and Google Earth and I read. Usually biography from the place and time is great. In translation I most definitely do not read Russian, I can pretend with German or French (OK I’m lying but at least the alphabet is the same). Fiction written in the place and time is also really useful even if it isn’t what you’d normally read. But be careful, translators can lead you astray, I am fairly sure that Russians in the 1940s did not use the term “motherfuckers”. Yes, something equally derogatory but probably not that term.

So if you are a writer what do you do? Do you stick to what you ‘know’ or do you venture further afield?
And how important is it to be authentic?

Now finally, and in a completely different vein. I got my new camera on Friday night (Yay!) It is proving more difficult to learn then I thought. It is so different to my rather basic previous model. However I am getting some good piccies from it already .

A random sample of what I have taken since Saturday (most of these are worth clicking to enlarge).
The Yarra River.A long exposure taken without a tripod, image stabilizers are brilliant!

Some tiny flowers (I have no idea what they are, but a succulent and so not native)

Some tiny baby ‘spitfire caterpillars’ Actually they are not caterpillars at all. They are sawfly larvae. If you think they are ugly now imagine them two inches long, covered in bristles and vomiting a sticky mess of eucalyptus oil at you. But they are native so I love them and they are very sociable (to each other).

Autumn leaves.Great colour saturation with this camera!

And finally as appropriate for the end of a post. The sunset last night.

Regeneration and Sunset

Once again we have been spoiled with beautiful Autumn weather.

And once again we have been out and about. We were late getting away so we only drove about an hour into the hills to the north.

We went to a spot called Island Creek Reserve in the Kinglake National park.

Kinglake was one of the towns all but destroyed in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires (173 people died in the fires-many in Kinglake).

The bush here was devastated by the fires. Yet the Aussie bush is amazingly resilient. Eucalyptus trees usually survive fires.

This piccie was taken from the picnic area; around one in five of these mature trees have perished in the fire. The rest are struggling and hanging on. I expect some will recover while others will perish over coming years.

But the bush has a strategy for jumping back. Many species seeds germinate after a fire.

As you can see from this piccie literally thousands of saplings have sprung up from the ash. It is barely possible to move away from established paths here. These young trees will grow like mad for the light, gradually thinning themselves out as the larger ones shade out the smaller.

By the time we finished our picnic we had time only for a short walk because dark was threatening to close in.

As we walked I got a shot of the creek, once again the banks are choked with new growth.

We saw a number of little delights.

This little fungi

And this thing, I have never seen one before.

My guess is some kind of fruiting body of a fungi but honestly I have no idea. Click on it to enlarge it is the strangest thing.

When we got back to the car this little fellow was arguing with his own reflection in our wing mirror!

Sorry about the bad photo but it was really bad light under the trees. By the way he is little native known as a “Scarlet Robin” (Petroica multicolour)

On the way home I paused to look down into the valley.

The lingering sunset was drawing amazing colours across the landscape.

I thought the harsh lines of the power-lines made a great contrast to the soft pastels of the light

If you click on the third sunset piccie you might be able to see some distant lights twinkling. They are part of the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Now in case I don’t get to it tomorrow (it’s been one of those weeks) an extract from my WIP. And by total coincidence it is kind of fitting this gets posted this weekend.

It follows straight on from last weeks post. Valentina is still hidden in a hanger on a Berlin Airfield and still recovering from shock…

Valentina Meshcova

Berlin 1948

‘Penelope?'

‘Yes Val?’

'What's going to happen to me?’

'I'm not quite sure, Ronnie is trying to organise travel documents for you. To get you home to England. The fact that you're a Major defecting is worth something, but they aren't jumping with excitement because you are a medic, not a field commander, or in intelligence. He’s having to make a few phone calls and wake people up.'

'Won't he get himself in trouble?'

'No, plenty of people owe Ronald Chesterfield favours. He'll just call some of them in.'

I was dozing on one of the chairs when I realised she'd gone again. A different guard was sitting by the door. The mattress was empty Natasha was gone.

Panic gripped me, I barely remembered to speak English. 'My little girl, where is my girl?'

He smiled reassuringly, 'It’s all right Luv, she's gone with Mrs Parnell.'

'Who's Mrs Parnell?'

'The lady who was here before.'

I relaxed, a little. He explained, ‘She, meaning Mrs Parnell, said she was taking your daughter to find some breakfast.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘It’s just coming up to eight o’clock.’

I dozed again, still sitting in the chair. Somehow I felt I would be too vulnerable if I lay on the mattress.

Some hours later a car rumbled into the hanger. I waited expectantly, Natasha burst in followed by Penelope, ‘Valentina we brought you some flowers.’

I smelled the roses she thrust under my nose. ‘Thank you, but some breakfast would have been more useful.’

‘But they do smell lovely.’

‘They do but they aren’t as lovely as you.’

Penelope frowned, ‘I was planning to take you for something to eat. But you’ve slept on wet hair.’

My stomach rumbled at the thought of food. ‘Do you think it will be safe?’

‘Safe enough, we’ll go to an army canteen. Now let me help with that hair.’

I didn’t mind being spoiled. But I drew the line when she suggested makeup. ‘I am going to eat breakfast not to the Bolshoi.’

‘With a little practice you could all but cover that scar on your cheek.’

‘Why? I’m hardly husband hunting.’

Natasha burst out laughing, ‘What is so funny?’

Her laugh continued, we had tickled her fancy. She giggled breathlessly, ‘Husband hunting!’

I sat low in the back of Penelope’s Volkswagen. It didn't make me invisible but I definitely felt less exposed. Berlin felt as hostile to me now as it had in April and May 1945. As dangerous now as when we fought our way in to root Hitler out of his lair. I did not look twice at the building where we stopped, like so many in Berlin it was pockmarked with bullet holes and still had its windows boarded up.

Natasha skipped happily across the footpath and onto the step at the front. She stood with a self satisfied smirk. 'Valentina hold these for me.'

Obediently I took them, and then looked, 'Why on earth did you bring the flowers?'

I did not realise what the building was until I stepped inside. An aisle ran down the centre, lined with benches along each side.

A church.

At the far end sat half a dozen uniformed men.

In front of the altar Fred who had been our armed escort the afternoon before.

And a priest.

And Ronnie, smiling the happiest smile I had ever seen.

I never expected to cry at my own wedding, but it passed through a blur of my tears.

The words meant little to me, I repeated what I had to repeat. What mattered was the man standing so tall, opposite me and smiling the smile that had enchanted me six years before.

But then consternation, 'The ring...'

Ronnie's smile evaporated there was no ring. In Ronnie's rush the obvious had been overlooked. 'Bugger! Oh, sorry padre.'

'I have a ring.'

Penelope struggled with her finger and passed the ring to her brother.

'Danny's ring? Are you sure Pen?'

She smiled, tears in her eyes too. 'Danny wouldn't mind.'

Her next smile was for me, 'See Val? I said I was your friend.'