Beasting is finished, anyone for a Mince Pie?

 

There isn't anything else I could write about this week. On Friday, 19th January, I finished the first draft of my debut novel, Beasting Dartmoor—nearly 67 thousand words and 210 pages and one word. To say I feel pretty chuffed is a bit of an understatement.

It has been something that has been with me for over three decades. The first efforts were saved on 5.25-inch floppy disks; to be brutally honest, it's more likely to have been writing paper.

I used some of my many life experiences, except the murders, for the story, and yes, there are a couple of characters based on colleagues I may or may not have worked with. If anyone of them is reading this, they'll be panicking. 

So, what now?

The plan for 'Beasting' is to put it aside for a few weeks before starting to edit. Some parts may need a rewrite, and I need to drop a few more hints earlier. And as writers, we're always on the lookout for plot holes.

What now for my writing? After a week where I felt a bit malaise after finishing the book, I'm back on here for this week's blog, and over the weekend, I shall be writing for my next Substack email/post. I can also announce that I have started 'The Mince Pie Murders'. It's a cosy and humorous novel or novella. I need to see where the story goes. I would like to see this work turn into a series if possible. I have started the first chapter and have written a few character sheets. I'm also using an app called MindNode to plot and plan the story. This time, I am writing directly into the Scrivener app rather than copying and pasting from Pages into Scrivener. I intend to use all the bells and whistles of Scrivener this time. 

With the start editing date safely set in the calendar and mince pies already in the oven, I will not likely be slowing down anytime soon.

Writing Letters? Who does that these days?

The days of writing letters have passed, I feel. That's quite a bold statement. But let's have a quick think about it. Most, if not all of us, will send important information via email. We receive almost everything via email these days. Annoyingly, I still get a bank statement through the post and am still looking for a way to stop it; it just goes through the shredder and is recycled. I may be able to stop it on my banking app if I can get that working.

Let's face it: if we need to send someone a message, we are more likely to text, WhatsApp or Messenger. Those last two, of course, are owned by Meta. There are other ways to message that I'm unaware of. 

There are many collections of people's letters, and one of my Christmas presents was a book of letters written by my hero author, David Cornwall, also known as John Le Carré. It is interesting to see his life in letters and how his life has interacted with his writings.

Many other collections of letters by writers and others detail life in different times. In the future, will there be such collections to read about the current turbulent times that we live in?

When we cleared my parent's house, I found that my mother kept the letters and postcards I had sent during my time on HMY Britannia and throughout my other travels in the Royal Marines. My brother Andrew's 'blueys' that he had sent when he was deployed with his RAF Squadron during both Gulf Wars were all there, too.

Is it the same for service men and women these days? There is email and internet access these days, albeit restricted for security reasons. However, I would like to know if writing paper and envelopes are still available from the NAAFI shop.

Letter writing is a dying art in the 21st Century. I certainly can't remember when I last hand-wrote a letter. That is the sad reality of the digital world. I can think of areas in our social lives where we would be better off with pen and paper rather than cruel comments on digital media.

I might go away now and have to think about who I can send a letter to, and then there's the problem of negotiating the Post Office ( now that's another piece, indeed).  

 

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We all talk about the weather, don't we?

It's almost a national pastime in this country to talk about the weather, and hasn't it been shocking over the last couple of weeks? At a time when the country expects and wishes to have snow for Christmas, we are paddling in the damp weather.

For those of us who are still sending and receiving Christmas Cards, we love the snowy scenes pictured on them. One of the most famous scenes is of the Frost Fairs on the Thames. These were brief events between 1309 and 1814 when the Thame froze 23 times. Of those 23 occasions, only five were cold enough for them to be able to hold a fair on the river. From the amount of scenes we see depicted at this time of year, you would have thought that the Frost Fairs would have been a regular occasion. 

The last time that the Thames froze over was, in fact, the winter of 1963, when the country suffered a long period of winter weather, with the thermometer dropping to -20 degrees on occasion. I was barely one year old, and we lived on a farm at least a mile from the village. My mother used to tell me that we were snowed in until March that year, and the water froze in the pipes. Thankfully, my Grandparents lived in the village, and my Grandfather was the Shepherd for the farm. He could get through on his Massey Ferguson tractor and bring food and water to my beleaguered parents and presumably our next-door neighbours in the other cottage. We moved out of that cottage into the town on the day of the World Cup Final in 1966, but that's another tale. 

In the 21st Century, we have to contend with storms, the latest of which 'Henk' has been causing havoc this week. Climate change is said to be the main culprit, and I have to agree. We are looking at a period of much colder weather next week, but generally, this winter so far, it has been a lot milder than we would expect. It's getting colder next week. Time to get the winter coat out, methinks.

Stuart's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free subscriber.

https://stuartbilverstone.substack.com/