RichardB

I did actually consider putting in something about rationing, but decided that I’d make my point more vividly by keeping it simple and sticking to one issue.

Rather more distressing than your neighbour, I had an e-mail argument a few months back with my oldest friend (I haven’t seen him for a couple of years, and perhaps it’s just as well), who…[Read more]

Lucky? Yes, and I didn’t even mention the boat trip out of Mallaig, again in beautiful weather, where we got close up to a school of dolphins. Magic.

Actually, I feel quite privileged every time a kite comes over our house, even though they they are about the biggest conservation success story of the past century. It’s simply because they are so…[Read more]

Credit where credit is due: I believe it was Libby who first used the phrase ‘instinctive writer,’ even if she was replying to me.

I’m probably too instinctive for my own good. I’ve been told at various times that I have a natural feel for plot and pace, that my characters speak with their own distinctive voices, even that I’m good at that notoriously difficult thing, sex, but I never step aside and coldly think about any of these things. When I see phrases like…[Read more]

I don’t reckon myself as much of a beta reader either. Partly it may be lack of confidence in my own opinions, but mostly I think it’s because I seem to have trouble thinking analytically about writing, including my own. Years ago when I did the S-E Course, I repeatedly had the experience of Debi, or one of the others, telling me I’d been clever…[Read more]

Yes, in my first passage my MC was being smitten at his first sight of a young lady, and in the second someone was getting blasted with a shotgun. Hmm, content…

Now there’s interesting, as we say in Wales. Based on two short extracts from the last novel I wrote, I write either like James Joyce or (wait for it) Dan Brown. Not much difference…

Even after a year-plus of lockdown in various degrees I don’t do social media at all, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Zoom, no anything, so the Silence of the Denizens has been quite saddening for me. Not that I’ve been better (except in one respect) than anyone else. My problem is the opposite of that of several leading lights here: having…[Read more]

That’s probably one reason it was chosen as a refuge for the band. And yes, it does sound worth a visit.

If you’re curious, this page has a photo of the house as it was when the band was there, though it appears to have been taken from the back garden. A click will blow it up.