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21/8/2021 Intermission: see you in December! I'm winding down Arcane Publishing for a while as I prepare for four months of work to raise funds for all our 2022/2023 projects, including the launch of the Arcane online bookshop and the publication of my third novel The Right Place. I'm on 43,000 words on draft 1 so this is far from being done, but next year, I hope to be able to juggle things a bit better - virus dependent.
I hope to be able to post a picture or two once a week (or more realistically fortnightly) on my social media pages (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) if I manage to find time to get out in nature... I'll be back from 20th December 2021. Matt ArtPix will be very active though throughout the autumn and has some exciting events in the calendar, so keep an eye on his Facebook page!  I have just started The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I truly love it; the prose is unique, sparse yet full of meaning; it can also be quite poetic but rather cutting, almost violent. It will certainly be a firm inspiration when I start editing the manuscript of my third novel, The Right Place. I do have a tendency to write too much and always have to cut a lot as I go through the drafts. The book featured on this blog is from my own personal collection, published around 1940 by Grosset and Dunlap. The book is in excellent condition but missing its all-important dust jacket. What a shame I don't have in my possession the first edition published by Charles Scrivener's sons in 1925: it's worth £63,000 according the Abebooks (and this fascinating blog HERE comparing three different versions). This would probably fund my writing and publishing for the next forty years or so! I am not reading this one, but a cheap paperback version I've found in a charity shop... I don't want to risk spoiling my vintage copy!
I am entering my last week and a half of freedom as I will have to stop any creative enterprise, including writing, in order to concentrate on earning the funds that will allow me to complete and publish The Right Place.
I will try to post at least one picture a week on social media and on my websites, but nothing much will happen until late December 2021... 11/8/2021 On the Hardy Way: Affpuddle Heath The Hardy Way is one of the many fantastic well-maintained hiking paths that criss-cross Dorset. We walked a tiny portion of it yesterday from one of our favourite locations, Affpuddle Heath (one of the many small heaths in the area not far from Moreton, well-known for being the resting place of T E Lawrence (or Lawrence of Arabia). Lawrence's house Cloud Hills is also in the vicinity. It's a fantastic place to go for a walk at any season, and it is not far for us to drive either, so we often find ourselves there. At the moment, the roads are mad on the Dorset coast as soon as the sun shows itself, and therefore the woods and heaths are the perfect hiding place! There, heather is in full bloom and the variety of trees and plants staggering; the smells in the air are heady, and it's a paradise for insects and birds...     In a field overlooking Adminston farm, just south of Athelhampton, we came across a memorial stone. The Van de Weyer family, from Belgium, owned nearby Clyffe House. Sylvain Van de Weyer was the first to arrive in the UK in around 1840 and he was the Belgian ambassador to the UK! His grandson, Adrian's father, bought the house in the 1920s. Adrian was killed in the siege of Calais, just before Dunkirk.   I have been tracking the narrative of what I've done so far on the first draft of my third novel, The Right Place.
The story is a bit tricky and the progress has been very slow. In three weeks, I will have to down tools on the novel until later December in order to be able to earn the money which will allow me to publish the book and finally launch the Arcane Publishing online bookshop. Arcane has a pub date of August 2023 at the latest for The Right Place. 41,554 words at the beginning of today, I hope to have added another 1,000 by tonight... 5/8/2021 Fresh air on Purbeck Looking otwards Sandbanks and Brownsea Island from the Purbeck Way. This summer is a bit of a washout, and whenever the weather decides to be good, we rush out of the door to go and explore the wonderful landscape on our doorstep! Yesterday, we went back to Corfe Castle and Swyre Head, two of our favourite locations. Corfe Castle is an excellent base for stunning walks that give you breathtaking views. It is one of those rare places in Dorset (together with Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door) that appears on the "national and international tourist circuit". In the summer, and even more so this year, this small village is bursting with tourists - far too crowded for us! But it only takes 5mn to leave the hordes behind and find ourselves in the quiet, gorgeous countryside... We now feel energised, inspired, and ready to get on with all our projects! We'll be out there again soon... Watch this space!  The Hills of Purbeck...  Corfe Castle in the distance - not the best of pictures!   Looking down to Kimmeridge Bay from Swyre Head, and Portland in the distance... We are still pinching ourselves that our HQ is located in such an amazing place!  Taken from Swyre Head - the coastguard cottages on St Aldhelm's Head.  Just picked up my pen/keyboard today and started working again on the first draft of The Right Place, my third novel. It now has a new pub date of 2023, without any more precision, I'm afraid. These past few years, Real Life has really gotten in the way of any progress to be made on the manuscript, and the Covid crisis hasn't helped at all.
It's been very stop-start and I have grown increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress. My first two novels were planned, written, edited and published within 5 years (and I also found the time to launch my Arcane Publishing imprint within this time too!). There will be a long pause between September and December 2021 (have to earn money to allow me to complete the first draft and launch the online bookshop sometime in 2022). Progress report: 41,553 words. In the meantime, I have loads of lovely books and ephemera to sell and I'll be adding a few more over the next few weeks. Go and have a look at my temporary FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE SELLER PAGE. |
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August 2024
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