Chocolate chip waffles and scrumptious words

I just had to share this scrumptious post about quotes with you before I skip off towards the weekend.

It's from Terresa Wellborn's Chocolate Chip Waffle blog, which I love. And while we're on the subject of quotes, my very favourite quote blog is whiskey river, from which I will reprint this poem by Stephen Dunn.

There - a lazy Friday blog consisting entirely of other people's ingredients. Thank you Terresa, thank you whiskey.

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Choosing to Think of It

Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someoner
emoved from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home. The sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves - suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening, the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.

Stephen Dunn

Ten free books and free first chapter featuring Pickles the dog

As you might know if you've been reading this blog, Leonard is a man who appreciates a good slow pint and a nice fragrant tomato plant. He is living happily as a widowed gardener when he finds something mysterious in one of his wife's old handbags. Then his whole life starts to unravel...

Here's a link to the entire first chapter of my new novel, The Blue Handbag, which follows Leonard as he becomes a reluctant detective. The book is available now but officially out on Monday. Or just skip reading the first chapter and buy the book - you already know it's going to be the perfect summer read ; ) Here it is on Amazon UK, or it's only £5.49 ($9) at The Book Depository including free worldwide delivery. Change the currency at the top right hand corner.

I'm also giving away ten of my books. To qualify for the draw, all you have to do is write a short review of The Blue Handbag and post it online before the end of September. It doesn't need to be long - a sentence will be fine. Post it anywhere - Amazon, Goodreads, or your blog if you have one, and then email me the link. If you win you can choose from any of my books, including my next novel Thaw before it comes out, and the competition is open to everyone regardless of where you live. If you've already written a review that counts too!

And don't forget the offer of fifteen minutes of fame. As you know I'm interviewing 100 people who've read one of ten pass-it-on copies of The Blue Handbag at 100 Readers, and I'm also doing mini-interviews with other readers (the latest is with Donna Safford, here). If you'd like to do a mini-interview, drop me an email when you've finished the book.

That WAS a link-heavy post. I'll go back to talking about slugs and Fiat 500s next week.

Have fabulous weekends x

When You're Falling, Dive

I finished this book yesterday. It's a collection of fable-like stories from the author's life - his own or others, including Joan Didion, Isabel Allende, Eckhard Tolle and others.

It asks why 'some people blossom in advertisy while others fall apart', and several themes run through the book - spirituality, buddhist ideas, 'waking up', transforming adversity and vulnerability into strengths.

The style of Matousek's writing ocassionally grated on me, especially his under-use of the word 'said' and over-use of 'explained', 'asserted', 'asked' etc. (I wonder if someone made him take the 'said's out to make it more 'interesting').

Having said that, the stories speak for themselves. The book contains a great deal of wisdom, and it's also very accessible and engaging - as stories (at their best) are. Definitely a good one for the bedside table. I'll leave you with a random quote from the book.

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Saint Augustine said that we can only know what we love. And to know something is to know it's not yours. We're guests in this hotel, after all; even the ashtrays will have to stay. Still, attachment is bound to happen. We imagine our live to be an accretion, an increase of layers solidifying the identity that holds us down to the ground. But what if the opposite’s even more true, that we’re winnowed away, worn down by time, pushed into transparency? What if we’re humbled, without being severed, in order that we may move through the world with less friction, less regret but more desire, less protection but more love?

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen...

I wrote the poem at the bottom of this post many years ago. I wanted to speak about the delicious juicy more-ish buzz I felt when this friend was reading my work. I wanted more!

It reminds me of my younger brother at the swimming pool when we were little. He'd say 'look at me! look at me!' over and over until my mum gave him her attention, and then he'd do some kind of somersault or trick before repeating the whole process five minutes later.

I'm learning that when I seek this kind of attention out, I'm onto a loser. It isn't fair to ask people to tell you you're wonderful on demand. Even when they do, I can never get enough of it anyway. Buddhists speak of 'hungry ghosts' with tiny mouths and huge bellies. I never get a belly-full.

When I busy myself with living, and let praise come to me, I enjoy every mouthful, but it doesn't leave me craving more. It feels 'extra', like Raymond Carver's gravy.

The trick is knowing what to do instead of seeking praise, or any other kind of compulsive behaviour, when our bellies feels empty.

Sit with the emptiness. Give ourselves something nourishing, like a hot bath or a goats cheese and tomato sandwich. Be kind to ourselves. Be kind to someone else. We already have everything we need.

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All of us

Last night a friend read
my poems
for the first time
and praised several before
picking up her magazine again.
I wanted her to read
everything I
had ever written.

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen.

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Would you like your fifteen minutes of mini-fame? (and a mini-poem)

I'm going to be doing mini-interviews on my 100 Readers blog, with anyone who's read the book.

You can read the first one now - Joanna Swainson, mother of three and lovely person. Watch out for her name as I'm sure she's going to be a well known novelist at some point. She just needs to finish her debut novel first...

My lovely boyfriend has pronounced my lovely blue laptop dead, but he did manage to extract all my urls, email addresses, mail and documents out of it even though I hadn't backed them up. Thank you lovely boyfriend. As soon as I can think of where to get the money, I'm going to get myself a Macbook Pro. Until then I'm on the PC in the spare room which sounds like an aeroplane.

A little poem to finish. This has been one of those disjointed posts with different stuff. I hope you don't mind.

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Hold on

An old pop song: the lyrics rise up
from the silted depths intact.

Just when we think we
know it, the world pulls away.

No wonder we hold on tight
to these strings of words.

Getting published - The Holy Grail?

Six years ago, I completed my first novel. Like most unpublished writers, I desperately wanted a publisher. I wanted my work to be read. I bought The Writer's Handbook, sent off submissions, started a blog, and continued to write. Six years later, my first three novels were accepted for publication by Snowbooks. My debut, The Letters, was published earlier this year. Was it all I'd hoped for? Was being published my Holy Grail?

Continue reading the rest of this article at the marvellous Juxtabook, and thank you to Catherine for having me.

I was away at a music festival this weekend. I'd forgotten about the toilets, and the queues, and all the people. We did have a lovely time though, and I'll write about it more later in the week. Until then...

Hello small slug

Yesterday morning I washed a few small Desiree potatoes from the garden and left them out to dry. One of them had a narrow round bore-hole and I washed this out.

An hour later (when making a cup of tea) I saw a black blob on the skin of one of the potatoes. It was a slug, as fat as my thumbnail.

He must have been hiding in that hole. I'm glad he came out to say hello before I baked the potato and ate it. I didn't squish him, but I didn't feel quite kind enough to set him free in the garden. I put him in the bin - I'm sure he'll be happy in there.

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widget spotting - here it is at bits of sky, marijka's world, creative resistance to survival, Naturally Green Blog, Wood among the trees... small stones are TAKING OVER THE WORLD! Ha ha ha... (evil laugh)

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Have a lovely weekend x

That fine line between letting-people-know-about-my-books and being-bloody-annoying

More than 1000 people entered a competition to win copies of The Blue Handbag over at Goodreads.

After the competition ended, I started sending these people friend requests, letting them know about my quarterly newsletter (which always has free articles and a competition to win free books) and this blog.

Yesterday this is the reply I got from one of these Goodreads members:

"So did you choose me to be a friend so you could market more books or because you really are choosing friends?"

Urk.


I do worry about becoming annoying, like that fine specimen of a salesman in the photo. Sometimes I think that if my novels were 'good enough', they'd sell themselves - I'd just have to sit back and watch the money rolling in and become a wealthy woman of mystery. Sometimes I feel like stopping all my blogs and expanding my vegetable patch instead, or never mentioning in conversation again that I'm a writer.


However.

Books do not sell themselves. My publishers Snowbooks do a fine job of getting them into the shops, but there they compete with thousands of better known authors, and as I've said before it feels like every book I sell is something of a miracle.

So I'll keep blogging, and letting-people-know-about-my-books. Yes, because I would like to eventually make a living from my writing, but more importantly because I want to find people who will ENJOY my books, and equally importantly, I love to write. Books, blogs - it's all good. It's what I do. And if every so often I cross the line and become bloody annoying, well I'll just have to be annoying.

PS This particular Goodreads member, once I'd written an honest answer, apologised if she'd sounded harsh and said she was still interested in reading my books. All's well that ends well.

PPS BUY MY BOOKS! BUY MY BOOKS! Or I won't invite you to my birthday party! ; )



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A new interview is up at 100 Readers - meet Kath Glover and her lovely dog Wilma.

Sit here. Eat.

The book I'm reading at the moment had this poem in it - I've read it before, but it was good to get re-acquainted.

I don't have anything else exciting to say today. Happy Wednesdays.

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Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the others welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.



Derek Walcott
(here's a link to his Selected Poems)

Which fifteen labels would you use to describe yourself?

I was reading the 'labels' section down on the right hand side of this blog this morning and chuckling about how well the list of words described me (or at least how I like to see myself).

An edited selection of the list: authenticity, bad jokes, being a writer, books, crazy person, disclipline, egogooglaholism, gratitude, growing things, letting go, ordinary things, paying attention, slowing down, yummy food, zen.

Come on then, what would your fifteen labels be? If you've got a list on your blog you can use that, and if not you can cheat!

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There's a particularly beautiful small stone at a handful of stones today, although of course they're all beautiful. If you'd like them displayed on your own blog (like the one on the bottom right of Planting Words), just visit the widget-man.

If we'ne not already linked on Facebook, do come and say hello! I like it when people ask to be my friend...

What is your body telling you?

I've been feeling excited over the weekend as I'd made an impulsive decision to do some extra training.

The course felt like the perfect training for me for a number of reasons. It felt like it would solve a few problems, and bring a great richness to my life over the next two years.

Alongside the excitement butterflies, I was also aware of a different variety. These butterflies didn't feel so friendly. They felt unsettled, fractious.

I dismissed them and carried on with my plans. This morning, just before I filled in the application form, I got some information which pointed me towards questioning my decision. This little space was enough to let me see how desperately I'd wanted this training to be 'the answer'. I got suspicious. I realised that it was an attempt to fix something that couldn't really be fixed.

I might do the training, and I might not, but I'm going to give myself more time and space to decide. Those anxious butterflies were right all along.

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We have our twelfth reader of The Blue Handbag over at 100 Readers - go meet Heather Anastasiu and her lovely pink hair. There's also a nice little review of the book here, thanks Donna!

A good post on how to get over the fantasy of being thin (and advice on Macbooks please)

Here it is, at the rather splendid Red Room by Kate Harding, who wrote 'Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere'.

I particularly like all the swearing.

A good article for me to read today, as I just ate two mini pots of ice-cream and a piece of white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake.

On a completely unrelated issue, after the death of my laptop I'm seriously considering moving over to the other side, and getting a Macbook. Does anyone have the new Macbook Pro? Do you think it's worth getting it over the 'basic' white one? If you have a Mac do you love it?

Meditation and Galaxy Caramel

I have a modest meditation practice of 20 minutes every morning (although if you've tried sitting still then you'll know how long 20 minutes can be!)

The idea is that I sit in lotus position facing a wall, and pay attention to my breath. If I have any thoughts, I just notice them and then return to paying attention to my breath. Simple!

This morning I crossed my legs, started my timer, and started thinking about Galaxy Caramel. I'm going shopping this afternoon and I wanted to add some to my shopping list. Then I returned to my breath. Then I thought about an email I needed to send. Then I returned to my breath. Then I thought about Galaxy Caramels. Then I thought about writing this post, and wrote most of it in my head.

Then I returned to my breath.

You get the picture. What hope do I have of getting anything done, if my mind skips about like a child (or like a Fiona) in a sweetie shop?

The returning bit is the key. It's the same as being a writer. Life interrupts. Laptops break. Houses flood. It becomes necessary to go out for Galaxy Caramels. But I return to the writing. What else would I return to?

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In other news....

Hello to my new readers - good to see you here!

I've set up a Questions and Answers group on Goodreads where you can ask me a question about anything you want. I won't say I'll answer them, but you can ask... click here.

The Blue Handbag has got even cheaper on The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery) - here.

And the final stop of the Snowbooks blog tour was at How Publishing Really Works here.

Happy weekend!

Lovely blue laptop problems and lovely boyfriends

My lovely blue laptop (which was far more expensive than any equivalent laptops because it was blue and I wanted a blue one) has refused to wake up this morning.

The power supply thingy has been dodgy for a while, and it's now refusing to work at all.

My patient lovely boyfriend has set me up on the big computer in the other room, so I didn't have to go into internet withdrawal and so I could get on with my writing. I'm almost at the end of my second draft of Joe in Amsterdam.

The computer fan does sound like an aeroplane, and I can't really concentrate. Can I have permission to take a day off my writing please?

PS patient lovely boyfriend has just popped his head round the door and he suggested it might be more productive for me to go onto forums and look at power supply problems with my laptop rather than blogging about it. Doesn't he know that I'm a WRITER?

A continual turning towards the genuine (and a free book and a thankyou)

My new mystery novel The Blue Handbag has just gone down to £5.99 on Amazon UK - or if you're not in the UK you can get it for £6.20 with free worldwide delivery from those jolly people The Book Depository. Again, it's not officially released yet, so shhhh! Leonard and his dog Pickles would very much like to meet you.

I'm interviewed with the rest of the Snowbooks crew on Strictly Writing today - everyone else's answers were much funnier.

Also I have a signed copy of John Tarrant's 'bring me the rhinoceros' now (very kindly sent to me by the man himself, as a swap for my small stones) and so I'd like to give my unsigned copy away to a good home.

It's about koans, which are a kind of Zen riddle, but it's pretty accesible and I don't think you'd have to know anything about Zen to enjoy it. It's very wise and I know I'll be returning to my copy again and again. There's an extract below to whet your appetite. If you're in the UK just send me an email and I'll pick someone out of the hat at the end of the week. If you're in the US or elsewhere feel free to enter if you're happy to pay the postage, but then frankly you might as well buy yourself a shiny new copy of the book - sorry!

What makes a human life real and beautiful is available in every place. An insubstantial and alienated life - eating a hearty breakfast of a cardboard photo of corn flakes - is always on offer but its consolations are not consoling. In order to embrace a handmade life, you do have to be willing to deal with [...] awe and fear. But you have to deal with awe and fear anyway, and when you pay attention, a continual turning towards the genuine just happens.

I love that last bit. Pay attention, and a continual turning towards the genuine just happens. Here's to that, and here's to giving us the strength to turn towards all the messy and difficult bits too. John blogs at Zenosaurus.

I'm feeling grateful for this blog today, and to you, for reading. We're in this big old boat together, after all. Thank you.

There must be easier ways to make a living...

I went shopping for books yesterday. I had an hour between clients. I fancied a browse.

After half an hour I picked up a book I'd never heard of, 'When You're Falling, Dive'. Then I happened upon a book I'd heard of online - I've 'met' the author, and it had appealed to me. It was the last copy and it was a bit battered, but I added it to my pile.

They were both wearing three-for-two stickers, so I just needed to find my third book. I looked for Susie Orbach's Bodies, which had been on promotion and prominently displayed all the previous month. I couldn't find it anywhere. Eventually I asked, and they said they didn't have any in any more. They'd sent them all back! The wonderful and well known Susie Orbach didn't have a copy of her latest book in this major bookshop!

I frantically looked for something else I wanted, but I ran out of time, and put both the books back so I could return to work.

Later I reflected on how random and arbritrary the process of buying a book had been. Who is going to buy my books, once they're off 'promotion' and languishing in the 'R' section shoulder to shoulder with much more famous authors? How will my 50 pences ever add up to a decent wage?

You could say that there must be easier ways to make a living. That would be true. Or you could say that whenever someone buys one of my books, it's a miraculous privelige.

If you want to start your day with a miracle, here they are ; )

PS an interesting article at The Guardian about the manipulative ways of cats... we knew this already, didn't we cat owners? I know who gets fed first in this household and it ain't me...

PPS look what I found... a miracle : )

Snowbooks authors (that's me) on tour

My publisher Snowbooks has set up a tour with five of their authors, including me. We're a varied bunch, as that's the spice of life.

I don't want to go on tour in a little orange bus this time, I want to go in Rosie. I think there would just about be room for us if everyone breathes in.

Our first stop is Me And My Big Mouth - read our Quinterview here.

A gift for you this Friday

Can you spare ten minutes? If not, then five?

Go and make yourself a cup of tea.

Get comfy. Click here. Read the poem slowly. Read it out loud if no-one is listening.


Now listen to Garrison Keillor read it out in his unctuous voice. The poem is just after three minutes into the audio.

Sip your tea. Feel your feet on the ground. Imagine the nuzzling.

Aaaaaahhhhhh.

Shabby old Essential Zen

I'm a person who likes shiny new things, as evidenced by my love of Rosie, and my excitement every time I get a new mobile phone.

I was disappointed when my second hand copy of Essential Zen arrived yesterday. It is an ex-library book from Wiltshire. It has a battered plastic cover and the pages are yellowing.
And then I read this paragraph, in the introduction.

We all tend to possess, accumulate, store, and consume, trying to have as much influence and control as possible in our daily lives. This produces a great deal of anxiety, which in turn creates a longing for freedom from such a mode of clinging. Sooner or later we may come to understand that we are free when we are not preoccupied, that we receive more by letting go, and that we achieve more by being selfless. This is the dynamics of nonpossession, which is an essential part of the creative process in the Zen world. (by Kazuaki Tanahashi)


Clever old Zen book, turning up in a battered form to give me another lesson.

My book has passed through at least forty hands - I counted the date stamps. Everything wears out. We can love things as they are.

The easiest blackcurrant jam in the world

You will need:

4 or 5 old jam jars
2 lbs of blackcurrants
A large saucepan
3 lbs of granulated sugar
A bowl and some clingfilm
A fork to crush the currants

The most time consuming bit of this recipe is preparing the currants, by pinching out those little whiskery bits and taking off the stalks. My friend Hazel says if you freeze them you can just rub them off, but apparently your hands get very cold indeed. If you have a couple of hours to spare on a sunny day, it's really a very satisfying job.

Once that's done, bash up the blackcurrants a bit with a fork, mix in the sugar (granulated is better than any other kind apparently) and put them in a bowl. Clingfilm it and leave them in the fridge overnight.

In the morning first sterilise your jam jars however you like - I wash mine in hot, soapy water, rinse them in clean water and then put 'em in the oven at 140C/275F/Gas 1 for half an hour.

Then make the jam! Bring the fruit and sugar to the boil and let it boil for... THREE MINUTES. Then let it cool down a bit and pour it into the jars. I try to pour mine in without getting it everywhere but always fail. Really ought to get a funnel.

Hey Presto!

I like to make snazzy labels for mine with felt tips and envelope stickers, but that's optional.

Let me know if you try it out!

If you haven't signed up yet you'll be missing out...

To mark the publication of The Blue Handbag in a few weeks time, I'll be giving away ten books.

The competition will be 'first come first served', and it'll be launched in my newsletter a month before I open it up on the blog (if there are any books left by then).

If you'd like to enter early, make sure you're signed up for my newsletter before the 1st of August putting your email into the box on the right and ticking 'Fiona Robyn's Quarterly Newsletter'.

You can sign up for one/more of the others too, but the competitions are all on the Quarterly one.

I've currently got more than 800 subscribers, and it'd be lovely to make 1000 - if you have any friends who might like to give them a try then do send them my way! If it's easier I'm happy to subscribe people if you send me their email addresses - it's easy to unsubscribe if they get annoying.

Ta!

PS Shhhh don't tell anyone but I think The Blue Handbag is available early on Amazon UK...

Let it go. Let it come to you.

Buddhism is a great tradition for me to have found, because it speaks so much of letting go.

I'm not the world's greatest letting go-er. In fact you could call me a teensy bit controlling.

I also love the way Buddhists talk about everything being 'an opportunity to practice'. It's another way to look at all the messy stuff - the things that piss us off, the ways in which we feel we're failing...

This morning I felt a bit panicky about my 100 Readers project [where I handed 10 copies of my next novel The Blue Handbag to 10 friends, who each handed their copy on to another friend, who will each...etc until I have 100 interviews].

I haven't had a completed interview from anyone for a couple of weeks. I started thinking I ought to be finding out who has the books, chasing people up...

And then I let go. They will come to me. I don't need to get my hands on these things so quickly. It's like telling the dough to hurry up and rise.

Whilst we're on the subject, here's a good article about letting go at Tricycle.

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PS Talking of bread, I pinched the whiskery bits from 2lbs of blackcurrants at the weekend and made 5 and a half jars of jam - labelled with my own coloured-in-with-felt-tip labels. This really is the life! Happy Monday x

Sweet rain and gratitude

Before I grew vegetables, I managed to be grudgingly grateful for the rain. I am a sun lover, and rain gets in the way. 'At least the grass will be happy,' I conceded.

We have had three glorious days of baking heat. The earth is parched, cracked. I went to bed last night with a plan to water the vegetable patch today. My veg patch is a little way from the house, and so this involves two hoses and a lot of time and effort.

This morning it is raining. It is raining on my yellow courgettes and my raspberries. It is raining on my embryonic runner beans and my scarlett chard. Sweet rain.

After planning this post, my Daily Dharma email arrived. Sychronicity:

The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.

Joan Halifax Roshi, from Essential Zen

Tangled roots. Precisely.

And who knows what else we might be grateful for, if we were able to find a different perpective?

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I've really enjoyed writing here this week. Something else to be grateful for. Thank you for reading!

Peculiar cats and ginger ice-cream

Cats are peculiar creatures.

They find themselves a favourite spot and return to it again and again. Silver (pictured) spent some months squeezed into the gap between the rug and the wall underneath the radiator, and she currently can't be budged from the back cushion of the sofa (which is much saggier than it was before).

I've always been amused by the dogged (ha ha) persistance of their habits, followed by sudden and completely unpredictable switches to sleeping somewhere new.

Last week I went outside to eat a tub of ginger ice-cream.

It was a hot day. I moved one of the chairs from its usual spot in front of the house to the shade of the hedge. I enjoyed the new view - the sliver of road, the big trees, the quiet. I've been sitting there ever since.

Maybe it's impossible to make assumptions about how logical/illogical or sensible/silly someone else's decisions are until we've walked in their shoes for a while. Or their paws.

Widgets and rainbow cake

The a handful of stones widget has been going down well, and more than twenty blogs are now proudly sporting it - have a look at them all (in their fetching rainbow colours) here.

If you haven't seen the widget yet scroll down and have a look - there it is. Fancy one yourself? Here's the code and instructions to add it to your blog.

I'm enjoying my week of no-other-work-except-writing (and an occasional soupcon of blogging). The weather has been rather glorious, and I've had to keep on top of the tomato-plant watering. Don't you just love the sweet musty smell of tomato plants?

Now - who's going to bake me a slice of that rainbow cake and have it sent over for my elevenses?