Last Thursday I attended the RNA’s Northern Group’s meeting at Beckwithshaw near Harrogate. It was good to be sharing time with writers again. I had missed a full session of meetings earlier in the Year and this was the first of the Autumn meetings. The exchange of news about what we have been doing and are doing was lively and interesting as it covered many aspects of writing.
Frances Brody had brought along a copy of her novel A DEATH IN THE DALES published that day by Piatkus a division of Little Brown Book Group. I share the same publisher and was able to tell the meeting that I had recently signed a contract for a 90,000 word novel to be in their hands by April 2016. I am 8,000 words into the novel but as yet I have not decided on a title. I do like to have a title at the start because it helps to focus the mind on the story at the start of a writing session. No doubt something will soon spring to mind.

 

I have recently been visiting my daughters in Lincolnshire, the county I call ‘my second home’, the first being Yorkshire. I came to know Lincolnshire during the Second World War. I did most of my flying from there as a crew member of a Lancaster bomber operating from Dunholme Lodge and Spilsby. After that my association with Lincolnshire continued when two of my daughters settled in Lincolnshire and through them I came to benefit from the friendliness of its people. Whenever I visit my daughters I haunt the secondhand bookshops and generally find some gem to add to my collection. The other day I found two that I knew could help my research into the background of  the novel I have had commissioned by my publisher, Piatkus, part of the Little Brown Book Group. This will be under the name of Jessica Blair and has to be ready to go to Piatkus in April 2016. In the mean time two novels came out in February – JUST ONE MORE DAY (hardback) which has a World War Two RAF background, and A TAPESTRY OF DREAMS (paperback) with the woollen industry of the West Riding of Yorkshire and sheep farming in Lincolnshire as its background.

The next Jessica Blair novel TREAD SOFTLY ALICE is in the hands of the publisher and will appear in April 2016. Its background is Scotland’s Highlands, Yorkshire’s moors and the Boer War in South Africa.