Writing is a strange thing.

For months – sometimes years – you spend countless hours alone with imaginary people, wondering whether anyone else will ever care about them as much as you do.

Every chapter is rewritten.
Every sentence questioned.
Every scene doubted.

So there are moments during the publishing process that stop you in your tracks.

This week, my publisher has been editing Beneath the Ceiba Tree, and reading through his comments has been one of those moments.

Among his feedback were these words:

“I am very impressed with the standard of your writing.”

“The characters are strong, each with their own qualities.”

“I like that feeling of travelling – the whole package is really very good.”

“Very powerful writing.”

“Your chapter sizes work beautifully and the story continues to hold the attention very well indeed.”

As writers, we’re often our own harshest critics. We see every sentence we could improve and every scene we wish we’d written differently.

To have someone who reads manuscripts professionally recognise the very things you’ve hoped readers would feel is incredibly encouraging.

What pleased me most wasn’t simply hearing that the book works. It was hearing why it works.

The characters feel real. The settings transport the reader. The pacing keeps the pages turning.

Those are exactly the things I hoped to achieve when I first began writing Beneath the Ceiba Tree.

There is still editing to do, polishing to finish and plenty of work before publication day arrives. But moments like these remind me why I started this journey in the first place.

After all the hours spent wondering if the story was good enough, it’s a wonderful feeling to hear that someone else has stepped into its world… and wanted to keep reading.

The journey to publication continues, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.

There are some stories that you write, and then there are some stories that quietly wait for you.

Beneath the Ceiba Tree has been with me for many years. It has travelled with me through different chapters of my own life, patiently sitting in a folder on my computer, waiting for the moment I was ready to return to it.

When I first wrote the novel, I thought I understood the story I wanted to tell. The characters were there. The mystery was there. The secrets were there.

But something wasn’t quite right.

So, after stepping away from writing for a long time, I did something I never expected to do — I went back to the beginning and rewrote the novel.

Not a few chapters. Not a little edit.

The entire thing.

I changed the structure, deepened the characters, uncovered truths that even I hadn’t fully understood before, and most importantly, I discovered the ending the story was not what it should have been. The one I have written now is the one that had been waiting for me all along.

It’s a strange thing to return to a piece of work after so much time. You are no longer the same person who first wrote it, and that changes the way you see everything — your characters, their choices, their mistakes, and the things they carry.

In many ways, Beneath the Ceiba Tree is a story about how the past never truly leaves us. About secrets, friendship, loyalty and the moments that shape our lives.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the novel itself has had its own journey too.

I am incredibly excited about what comes next. There is still work to be done, but for the first time in a long while, I feel as though this story is exactly what it was always meant to be.

And I can’t wait to share it with you.

It’s been a while!

If you’ve visited this website recently, you may have noticed that things have been rather quiet. The truth is, life has had other plans for me over the last year.

Between family commitments, running my Equine Touch practice, working, and navigating a major house renovation that became far more complicated than expected, writing inevitably took a back seat. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day, and creativity often has a habit of retreating when life becomes overwhelming.

For a time, I wondered whether I would ever find my way back to the stories waiting patiently on my computer.

But stories are persistent things.

Even when I wasn’t writing, the characters and ideas never truly left me. Beneath the Ceiba Tree remained quietly in the background, growing and evolving as I worked through the many twists and turns of its story. What began as a simple idea has become a novel that means a great deal to me, exploring friendship, loyalty, secrets, and the choices that shape our lives.

Recently, I opened the manuscript again.

What started as a tentative return quickly reminded me why I began writing in the first place. There is something magical about stepping back into a world you’ve created and rediscovering the people who inhabit it.

So this is my gentle announcement that I’m back.

There is still work to do. There are chapters to refine, questions to answer, and stories to tell. But for the first time in a long while, I’m writing regularly again, and that feels wonderful.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my writing journey, whether you’ve read Gilding The Lily, followed my progress, or simply encouraged me along the way.

I’m looking forward to sharing more updates from the world of Beneath the Ceiba Tree and whatever adventures come next.

The heath had changed had colour, from a fiercely deep purple to weathered, wet grey.  

The heathers buffeted in the bleak wind, emblems of the strength of this land. 

The rain, cold and light, travelled westwards, like a moving curtain, closed and frigid, it’s mission never complete.  It put to ground the leaves that the wind stole from the trees; laid them there to rot and recreate in the spring.  

Further over the hillside, a muddy track lay from a solitary farm, three miles long, in a straight line to the road that led to the village.  

A young boy, no more than ten years old, and a sheep dog walked east along it, in the direction of the farm buildings.  Despite the weather, he was dressed in shorts and hobnail boots (no socks) and a flappy, thin jacket with a large flat cap that hid his hair.  He carried a long stick as a walking aide in his left hand, taller than he himself.  It clacked as its end met the suffering lane in time with his gait.  

Clack. Clack. Clack.  

Both fought against the lashes that the scolding wind threw against them, soaking their skin to the bone. The dog’s black and white fur lay in spiky clumps as he followed the boy willingly and diligently, his soulful brown eyes blinking against the elements.  

Clack, clack, clack.  

Finally, they met the gate of the farm.  It’s metal latch clanged loudly as the boy freed the catch, and it creaked open.  As it swung away, the rain suddenly stopped.  

A dark angry cloud lay in the atmosphere above.  It looked comfortable and averse to moving on, like a tired soldier climbing out of bed.  The sun pushed it gently towards its new destination.  A rainbow began to emerge.  The scent of the countryside rose up from the wet ground, clean and fresh, like new hay. 

The boy plonked through a puddle, carrying the stick above his head. The sensible dog padded around it.  An open- sided barn stood to their right, and old tractor and ancient farm machinery was left to rust under the slanted corrugated roof.  

The house lay straight ahead, it’s brick work dark from the storm.  A decrepit wooden door, with a brass fox-head knocker, was open, inviting all and sundry.  

The dog suddenly ran ahead and entered first, stopping briefly to shake itself dry, droplets flying over the threshold. 

The boy trailed after, no doubt relieved to find warmth and shelter.  He removed neither his boots or coat; he simply walked down the hallway and disappeared, out of sight, the dog already gone.  

The house had crumbled decades before, the only remaining part being the front side.  Parts of other walls behind stood with jagged tops.  Rooms bare to the extraneous outdoor life, different shades of wall paper, some floors still evident, but falling away, brick by brick.  It was like a cross section of a dolls-house.  No visitors ever came.  Everyone was too frightened.

Monday 27th April 2020

Number of words written last week: Hardly any!

This week’s target: continue editing until ready to enter on 30^th April.

Last week’s focus: MAKE IT REAL

This week’s focus: as above.

Last week, although I set myself a goal for 5000 words – I changed it.  At the beginning of the week I came across a writing competition that attracted me and I considered if Ceiba Tree was ready for it’s first submission.  I resolved it would need a few adjustments and much editing, but it could be possible and it could be ready.  The deadline is 30^th May, so if I’m going to do it, I need to be quick with this preparation, so the goal changed.

Firstly, I decided to create and Prologue with my first two chapters, which gives the opening a bit more of a ‘punch’.  Chapter 3 then became chapter 1.  It’s been a while since I read this chapter, and I began cutting and pasting with a passion, but believe I made it deeper.   Then on to chapter 4 and 5 – the same.  In order to get these first 15,000 words ready, I need to edit, edit, edit.  So, edit, edit, edit, I did.   Instead of adding words, I took some away.  Instead of telling I starting showing.  Now my total word count has reduced by about 500!  But I believe this work is making the story come alive.

Although I had a goal at the start of this week – I wasn’t afraid to change it.  But I also had an execution plan, which I feel was an important part of the work in visualising this new goal, which allowed me to vere away from the original goal with no guilt.  The feel of excitement at the prospect of entering a competition wills me on.  Not just that, but a clear vision of having the first few chapters of the book practically completed to a high standard.   To accomplish this means having an understanding of what success means me.  There is no end to my vision… it’s just a beginning after all.  If I want to change the goal posts I can, and it will help.  All of this aids with defining a clearer long term plan.  In turn, it gives me confidence each day and this all leads to being self-motivated. 

This didn’t actually take masses of time. I think one day, all I did was entered GTL in a book cover competition, and shared my first tweet about my upcoming book blog tour.  (Once this get’s going in May, I am hoping for some great review to spur me on.)

And this showed me that as long as I do something each day, even if it’s not writing, or it’s small thing like tweeting, this will eventually add up to some kind of result – and when I take the pressure off like that, things just seem to happen.

And a PS… I feel remarkably happy about my twitter following which I think i mentioned earlier is incredibly difficult to grow… but with a bit more interaction, my following has grown from 373 on 10th March to 408 today. That’s over one a day. Some people would say that was pathetic, but I believe it shows an honest and real organic growth.

My motivational quote for this week is: A LITTLE PROGRESS EACH DAY ADDS UP TO GREAT RESULTS.

Monday 20th April 2020.

Number of words written last week: 6500 (weekly target min 5,000).  Double yay!

This week’s target: min 5000

Last week’s focus: write, make it real, make it more real

This week’s focus: as above.

Managed to smash my target! Hurrah!

I found more ‘stuff’ this week which will help build on and stir up the contents of this novel.  During more research, it occurred to me that, whilst I know that African countries are fairly poor (and other hot, tropical zones where trees like Ceiba and Cacoa grow) I haven’t yet really given much thought to the fair trade issue of cocoa farmers.  They receive so little – about 3% of the price of a chocolate bar per day for all their work.  I now have a section of the book that covers this which I’m hoping can be an attraction to the novel because it intensifies the USP.  Also, my book coach Wendy Yorke encourages her writers to focuses on their own “What, Who, Why and How of your book”, and I really think that this particular part of my writing emphasizes these and make the story deeper and more engaging.

I also focused on a character’s ‘journal’ during this week, which I will use in the story too.  It brings an acute and genuine feel to how another character deals with guilt.  I became particularly excited when I started this because it has begun to ‘colour in’ some of the narrative – bringing it alive and making it real.  I hope I can carry this on as it’s especially encouraging and helps me to remain optimistic.

My motivational quote for this week: OPTIMISM IS THE FAITH THAT LEADS TO ACHIEVEMENT.  NOTHING CAN BE DONE WITHOUT HOPE AND CONFIDENCE (Helen Keller).

Monday 13th April 2020

Number of words written last week: 5000 (weekly target min 5,000).  Yay!

This week’s target: min 5000. (safe)

Last week’s focus: write, write, write.

This week’s focus: write, make it real, make it more real.

I feel slightly jovial that I achieved this week’s target, espeically as I partially failed last week (see last week’s Monday Blog). I say ‘partially as when I wasn’t writing I was researching, which, is as important as the rest. 

I managed to address some tricky situations in the plot that were not coming to me initially, and slowly it’s taking shape.  I find it amazing how when a certain situation is created, it all leads quite simply to the next situation and then bang, I have a hook and a twist.  But this wouldn’t come unless I began in the first place.

The research came in handy too – I managed to create a couple more characters and bring them to life in a realistic situation.  But I still need to add some depth and make them even more real.  It’s one thing putting down some realistic stuff on paper, but it’s another thing all together to make the words lift off the page with life and vigour and hook the reader in so completely that enter another world – the character’s world.

Self-discipline is the only key to working towards these targets I am setting myself.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing, I love it – it’s the doing it properly, and well that counts, and this is hard work. Without self-discipline it would not happen at all and I wouldn’t be writing this blog either.  But this type of self-discipline doesn’t mean being hard on myself or restricting the things I enjoy in order to do it.  No, it simply means controlling my actions, and my reactions.  So, when I don’t feel like writing, I think of how good I will feel once I finish a certain chapter, or a certain amount of words.  Because then the story moves on into another exciting phase, and I want to get to that phase.  And, on top of that, I achieved the thing I set out to do. So I have found that if I persevere with my targets, in order to achieve the next one, and the next, it begins to manifest as at type of inner strength and more importantly, self-confidence, because only then I can think ‘I knew I could do it!’, or even ‘I can be good at this, if I work at it’, and this will lead to ‘I can be better’, and at that point hopefully I can produce some of my best work.

So instead of thinking ‘I can’t be bothered today’, I will train myself to think, ‘I want to get to the next phase today’, and then, simply, ‘When I do, I will feel good about it’.   It’s just a different way of looking at it.

My motivational quote for this week: GOOD, BETTER, BEST.  NEVER LET IT REST.  ‘TIL YOUR GOOD IS BETTER AND YOUR BETTER IS BEST (St Jerome.)

Happy writing everyone!

• 

Monday 6th April 2020

I have decided to create a short, sweet, Monday Blog to help me self-motivate.  This blog really is just for myself and I don’t intend to educate or pontificate or lecture to anyone, with it.  Its simply a way to self-discipline.

I have found my concentration waning from one extreme to the other lately so I want to record things so that what I produce when I’m motivated, can motivate me to do more of the same, without zoning out.

I’m not going to post highly edited works of fictional art here – simply sentiments of how I feel about what I have done and how my novel writing is going and try and keep myself targeted and focused.  I thought I would post and share because then I can’t simply forget about it and this will help me to keep my promises to myself.

I aim to write it on Mondays, because Mondays is ‘office day’.  That is, I don’t ride the horses, which takes up quite a lot of my time and energy, so I can usually spend it catching up on things I haven’t bothered to do the rest of the time.  Even though we’re in the middle of the Great (as in ‘enormous’, not ‘good’) Covid19 Lockdown of 2020, when I find myself with more time, I am still trying to keep my office day going, and hence I’ve called this my Monday Blog.

Feel free to add anything you may feel is useful to me, especially where I’m struggling.  Thank you 😀

Monday 6^th April 2020. Monday Blog 1

Number of words written last week: 3000 (weekly target min 6,000).  Argh!

This week’s target: min 5000. Argh!

Last week’s focus: research, research, research.

This weeks focus: write, write, write.

As you can see, I failed abysmally with actually writing anything, but I DID get a lot of really good research done, which then motivated me to get an awful lot of scribblings down which I aim to transcribe into something amazing this week.   I also read parts of my African journal that I had completely forgotten about, like getting fake ID in order to get through an airport to travel from Buta to Kisingani in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).  Very unlike me.  But it was great research because I had also described staying the night in a small village and sleeping in a real mud hut, which I will use in my novel.

As a PR excercise, I tried to get people to read my first chapter, and I didn’t get a very good response on Twitter.  No-one shared or even liked it, despite me re-tweeting.  (But thank you to those that are reading this who did leave a comment on the blog, I am very grateful).  I find Twitter quite frustrating…  it seems so difficult to interact effectively and achieve followers. It seems you have to have the wit of a professional comedian, or a brain the size of planet to get followers. I have little hope, but maybe this will help.  Anyone?

So my focus this week is to create more chapters, add more content and aim for 5000 words MINIMUM!

My motivational quote for this week: PUSH YOURSELF BECAUSE NO ONE IS GOING TO DO IT FOR YOU.

 Let’s go.

 

My publishing journey has been on hold. After a break I didn’t emerge for quite a while. I discontinued going to my writing group.  Then I became involved in another project – collecting animals, including: three horses; three dogs; and two donkeys – and I bought some land to put them on! Most importantly, I ran out of money and was defeated by several publisher rejections. It drowned me and I gave up my writing.

I did think I’d pick it up again but couldn’t visualize when.  However, I didn’t stop reading my writer’s group emails. After about two years, an email arrived in my inbox entitled; ‘Stepping Down’, with the news that the current chairman was doing exactly that and he wanted to hear from anyone who would be interested to replace him. I could do that, I thought. And maybe, I could make the writer’s group a little more interesting. Make it work better for everyone. Perhaps, invite authors and coaches as guest speakers and, it might encourage me to write again. So, I went to the AGM and nominated myself. As it happened, I was the only nomination and I became Chairman, there and then. I guess that’s what you call grabbing an opportunity.

The following year, we designed a new website, we hosted a reading event during our local arts festival, and we had two highly successful meetings with guest speakers, a visiting author and author coach Wendy Yorke. She and I connected immediately and we talked together, late into the night. I discovered she was also a literary agent with very good publishing contacts. So, I gave her my first book Gilding The Lily to read, she loved it, and offered me representation a few weeks later. As soon as this amazing person gave me the thumbs up, my writing spark came alive again. New ideas sprung into my mind with a vivid vision and I immediately wrote the synopsis for my second book.

Sometimes you only need one person to believe in you. Right now, I don’t feel anything can stop me. Thank you, Wendy Yorke. You have helped me come back to my writing and I love you for it. My second book is awakening and taking shape happily, and it feels fabulous!

 

Devotion.

An infinite amount of forgiveness.

They get excited just because… they’re alive.

Their enthusiastic zest for life.

They run for the joy of running.

They wear their hearts on sleeves – just like us.

Their willingness to be trained.

The possession of a deep, deep love for their owner.

Loyalty.