WRITING AND WILDLIFE COLLIDE IN AN ARTICAL

 The hot summer sun is burning us dry. We cower and survive with aircon and the will to write is  with me - just!

We are still adjusting after our UK trip to South Shropshire and Harrogate and crime writers et al. There appears to be no normality as we re-adjust to being at home. Our thoughts are miles away with conversations not only about what we’re have done but next July too. The conversations are relentless and there is joy in that. We can look ahead, meet-up with friends and people who matter the most. And then there is the wider family of writers, consumers and drinkers. In the meantime I will enjoy each day and concentrate on the present. I love to do that.

Pre Harrogate and Theakeston Old Peculier Crime Writers Festival and the arrival of their long-list I put aside the books I was reading. I have now picked two up and read small chunks at a time. The reason for that is a novel appears too easily in my hand!

I have gone back to Anni Domingo’s “Breaking The Maafa Chain” and David Olusoga “Black and British” Anni’s book has been well researched - she told me so - and her origin is Sierra Leone. The connections are obvious - Africa, Black People, Slavery and historical facts. One, an interesting ‘novel’, with detail, and hard facts with Osuloga. I have much to learn. 

I have read C. L. Taylor’s “The Guilty Couple” I enjoyed it and reviewed it on this blog and on GoodReads. Just by chance a book club contact handed over a series by Frances Brody set in Yorkshires’ mighty industrial mill owning area. The first one “Dying in the Wool” I am enjoying. I dislike the word ‘cosy crime’ because it implies to me something not quite good enough! But that’s me. I appreciate good writing and she is good. Unlike ‘modern’ crime stories these are set in and after ‘The Great War’ within families that are several levels above the workers. Maybe not at an aristocratical  level but wanting to be. I am loving it but I have not deserted Anni or David.

Also the writing world keeps on revolving. There is so much out there. I am re-considering each one of the poems in my collection on wildlife not jut on criminality but the beauty of our land too. We are fast approaching the ‘inglorious twelfth’ and I am wondering what will happen this August? Will Avian Flu, hot sun, drought and the threat off fires reduce the intentions of the shooters to only sip a Pimms in the shade and wondering about their need to quench their blood lust or not. I will be blogging it.

Connected with the last paragraph is Clover Stroud’s article on ‘The Right to Roam’ and the sound bite of “ TEENS HAVE MORE FREEDOM IN THE CITY THAN’ - in our beautiful countryside. There’s much room for thought and the need to write.

I am pleased to say that Nora Nadjaran made me aware of her workshop with crowcollectiveworkshops.com - Blurring the Genes between Prose & Poetry. I am already tempted without going into detail. I am working on that connection.