WE'LL BE BACK SOON! ​

Tomorrow, we're off to the fourth edition of this great little festival - and we'll be sleeping in our beds as it's only a 40mn drive from our house! 

On the Friday, we'll be in the audience and on the Saturday, we'll set up stall in the barn just as we did last year! 
This year, I've given Gertie a more interesting look, paying homage to T.E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) whose house, Clouds Hill, is near the site of the festival! She will greet you on the stall... 
To get an idea of the stock Arcane Publishing and Matt ArtPix will take to the festival on Saturday, have a look HERE (books), HERE (music flyers) and HERE (band t-shirts).
​See you down the front! 

When we left the Arcane/ArtPix towers early on Saturday morning, the sky was dark and the clouds low. 
On our way, the rain started falling and got worse as we approached Bridport. We arrived at the St Michael's estate under a sustained rain and thought we would never be able to set up our stall. 
Miraculously, within 10mn, the rain had stopped and we managed to sort out our stall - thanks to a bit of plastic kindly provided by our neighbouring stallholders! 
We had glorious weather the rest of the day and we had a fab time. We had tried to give our stall a 60s flavour to follow the day's theme! 
We were visited by loads of pooches, big and small - they always provide great entertainment! A special mention to the laid-back Ted at Old Albion, such a cool dude!  

Our next event is the fab music festival Alice's Wicked Tea Party on Friday and Saturday (we'll have a stall on the Saturday only). 

We will be back at the Bridport Vintage Market in July (we're skipping one as it's a World Cup match day for England in the middle of the afternoon!) 

Matt ArtPix and Arcane Publishing are thrilled to announce that they will be back at the lovely Bridport Vintage Market on Sunday 27th May! 
This will be a very special event as this will also be the 50th anniversary celebration of the St Michael's Estate where the Bridport Art and Vintage Quarter is located. Hopefully, the good weather will last until the 28th! 
See you there!  
I keep adding more events to the Arcane Publishing EVENTS PAGE,  so go and check it out! 
​

The Woman in White was one of the books which provided inspiration for my second novel, The Book of Thoth. 
Mr Collins's elegant prose is a favourite of mine. I discovered it whilst studying The Moonstone at university and have never looked back! 
I decided to re-read the novel after watching the latest BBC adaptation of The Woman in White. As most adaptation, it didn't convey the complexity and details of the books and of course changed quite a few things to fit the agenda of today's media, hence vaguely ruining the charm of the novel somehow. 

​Matt ArtPix and Arcane Publishing will have a stall at the Bridport Vintage Market in the lovely Art and Vintage Quarter at the St Michael's Estate in Bridport! 

I had taken some pictures of the special stock I will bring on the day, but my camera has died on me and I can no longer post them... 

So come and see for yourself on Sunday 29th April! (and rain, go away!)

Yesterday, I finally returned to Abbotsbury to soak up the atmosphere ahead of (slowly) getting back to work on my third novel, The Right Place, set in and around this beautiful Dorset village. Over the past few months, we have driven through Abbotsbury on our way to West Bay, Bridport and Devon (nothing beats a drive along the B3157) but it is only yesterday that we actually found the time to stop for a while. 
We made it to the top of Chapel Hill of course - and as we entered St Catherine's Chapel, I was pleased to see that yet more messages and prayers had been deposited into the niches - after all, I have written several pages devoted to the messages and prayers to St Catherine left in the Chapel (you can read these extracts HERE)

My intention is to regularly go and spend a few hours in Abbotsbury this spring and summer, pen and paper in hand. As things are not very stable at the moment workwise and my writing schedule can go out of the window overnight, I have decided not to have any schedule - I will just make sure I keep a few hours a week to finally attempt to get the first draft done before next September. 

The countryside is just waking up here - the trees are still very wintry, but with good weather on the way (apparently), then things might change very quickly in the next week or so. 
At the moment though, the fields are teeming with ewes and their tiny lambs - two per ewe. It is just a delight to walk around, then stop and spend ages looking at these minuscule balls of wool - all ears and legs. 
The lambs are still very, very small, but in a few weeks, they will gather into gangs of ten to twenty individuals and race from one end of the field to the other and back - this is really one of the most entertaining spectacle! 
The lambs and ewes below live next to the famous Abbotsbury swannery. 
The little one in the last picture might never have seen a human before: even though its mum and brother/sister were walking away in the other direction, it just stood there, staring at us, fascinated by those funny looking things on two legs. It was incredibly small! 

Matt ArtPix and Arcane Publishing are booking events for the Spring and summer, a few have already been announced! Go to the Arcane Publishing EVENTS PAGE to know more! 

My house is full of books. My own, but also the second-hand books I sell at my unit in West Bay and at markets and fairs. I hope to develop this venture into an online shop (and maybe, hopefully, a brick-and-mortar shop. We would love to find a cheap but quirky building in the Weymouth area to turn our ideas into reality...)

Anyway. 
At the moment, the house is so full of stick that I keep telling myself that I shouldn't buy any more book until I have sold quite a few of them. 

But I have always been a book lover, and sometimes, I just cannot resist. 
Last weekend, I purchased three quirky little books for my own collection:

Isn't he just cute?
Ernie was published by Cuban photographer Tony Mendoza back in 1985. Unfortunately, my copy is not the original 1985 first edition but a 2001 reprint. In 1985, the photographer moved in with a New York artist who had a cat full of personality, Ernie. His new feline flatmate became his favourite model for a while. The book is small but full of life - Ernie really is a star! And the text made me chuckle a lot. A real treat! 

I will use some stories and details in Witches of Dorset by Olive Knott (with Rodney Legg and Amanda Allsop) in my fourth novel, the Rural Noir Hell Lane: A Barton Stacey Mystery. This one is the original 1974 edition. Really interesting to read as I start exploring the county again... 

I saw this lovely illustrated Australian children's books in a shop and couldn't leave without it, and therefore I bought it there and then. 1943, third edition, written by Ethel John and illustrated by Geoff. W. Ridley
I llove the fact that there is a little sticker inside: "Franceska Bookshop, 596 Hay Street, Perth". 
​A real little treasure. 

I will not lie: yes, I do miss going to gigs all the time. When we made the decision to move to Dorset, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to buy tickets on a whim for all the bands we wanted to see. When I was a music journalist and living in London, I could go to four/five gigs a week (hey, who could refuse a free entry to a metal/goth/industrial/cyberpunk/neofolk/other alternative genre gig?). Then I moved to Essex and any gig would entail an hour on a train, both ways. As I was a hardened commuter, it was fine for a few years.
But for my last year in the South East, though, the train journeys to and from London for gigs, exhibitions and the like became a pet-hate - and an expensive one at that. 

So when our excellent local band The Dolmen (who happen to be big players on the UK and European alternative circuit) organise a gig in their hometown to celebrate a local historical event, we just had to be there.
And the bonus: they invited London band PerKelt to come and join us in Weymouth! Or rather, it seems, PerKelt volunteered their services for expenses only according to The Dolmen’s frontman Taloch Jameson. This was quite a brave move following the disruption to the road and transport networks caused by “the Beast from the East” and storm Emma!
Thankfully, everyone made it to the Weymouth Centenery Club – granted, not the most glamorous of venues, but anyone who’s been to a gig at the 02 Academy Islington in London knows that appearances can be deceptive and it’s what’s happening inside that counts! 

The concert was part of an annual weekend of events organised around the theme of The Crabchurch Conspiracy, an aborted 1645 royalist plot to retake the ports of Weymouth and Melcombe for the King during the English Civil War. Every year, re-enactments and dramatizations of the conspiracy take place in Weymouth to celebrate the triumph of the local anti-royalists – and the free spirit of the local inhabitants, past and present.
Present of course was the author of the book which has inspired the whole weekend – Mark Vine, who wrote the book recounting the events, The Crabchurch Conspiracy. 

The Dolmen started by playing songs from their album The Crabchurch Conspiracy, written to accompany the book. To add some drama to the proceedings, each track was introduced with gusto by an actor setting the scene for each song. The band's evocative, action and emotion-packed set took us to the heart of the story.
​You could almost smell the sweat, the gunpowder and the blood and hear the screams of the slain and wounded. 

PerKelt are based in London and are a young, multi-national and multi-instrumental (and incredibly energetic) outfit who will probably blow your mind if you see them live. Signed to Suriya Recordings, a new record label launched in the autumn of 2017 by no other than Youth (yes, Youth, you know, the legendary producer and founding member of one of our favourite bands, Killing Joke!), PerKelt play "Pagan Speed Folk". Recorders, tribal drums, acoustic guitar, harp, fiddle (courtesy of brand new member Duncan) - it is an explosive mix inspired by folk tales and legends and the writings of William Shakespeare! There is an energy here, and some mystery too... Paya's voice rises above the music like an enchanted entity and you cannot take your eyes off her as she switches recorders, then goes from harp to recorder and from recorder to voice. David, the "smiling drummer", provides the raw energy whilst Stepan's virtuoso classical guitar playing contributes the core thread for each song. Breathtaking (literally!)

It was time for Taloch to swap his acoustic guitar for an electric one and The Dolmen gave us an absolutely brilliant set; this is a band who play to huge crowds but always seem to put the same energy into their concert wherever they are and how small the venue (thankfully, the volume monitor in the corner behaved itself!). 
This is "Medieval Celtic Folk Rock" for the 21st Century, at its best and most inspired, with rousing and solid melodies, spiritual and meaningful lyrics, oodles of charisma and a passion for freedom which is incredibly infectious.