Books that changed it all! What's yours?

Hello there, I hope you're well? Seeing as how it's taken me so long to start a blog in the first place, I'm absolutely determined to take it seriously and enjoy it, and it not be just another thing I do for so long then forget about! Something, I have to admit, I'm known for, unfortunately! But then again, I really don't think that'll happen in this case because I honestly haven't enjoyed anything even nearly as much as I do writing.

When I first started out I never imagined it would take hold in the way it has and that was years and years ago, which is really something unexpected for me. Everyday, since I began, I've sat down and scribbled something, most of it utter tripe, of course, but for the purposes of this particular post that's not important. And although there are times, many many times, when I find it incredibly difficult and stressful and completely beyond my limited abilities, I've never once lost interest or thought it boring or anything like that. The times when I have said to myself enough is enough, I've more chance of knitting fog than I do writing a novel anyone in their right mind would want ever want to read, twenty minutes later I'm back to it because I know now my life wouldn't be the same without writing in it. Cheesy but absolutely true. I love it love it love! Which brings me back to my first point.

I'm a borderline insomniac, it's ridiculous and it's in those wee small hours when sleep is giving me the finger that I think about everything I'd like to do, need to, etc ... I'm sure you're with me, even if I do ramble like a maniac! And last night I was thinking, worrying actually, about what I would post next on this blog. I couldn't think of anything, really I couldn't, it was awful but today, whilst out walking the dogs, I got chatting to a lady about, wait for it ... books and writing, surprise surprise! The main focus of the conversation, however, was why we started to read in the first place, whether it be a particular person - a family member for example or whether it was one book that changed everything.

I have to admit that I haven't always been a reader. Since I was 4, right up until five years or so ago, my life revolved around horses. I was crazy for them and when I wasn't at school, eating and trying to sleep, I was riding, so books never featured much at all really.

Not that I hadn't discovered the book that, in the end, would pull me back in. I had and it was Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. The librarian at my primary school picked it out for me and my gosh I loved it instantly. If I read it once during that first borrow, then I read it a million times. Even now, however many years on - and bare in mind I have the worlds worst memory - I could take you to the exact bookshelf where it lived, in that big old library that smelled of paint because it also doubled as the art room. Good God, I loved it!

Anyway, I digress, my point now is this. For some strange reason, despite Tom's Midnight Garden and my infinite love for it, over the next few years books took a back seat, until one night - again when I couldn't sleep - I hunted out my own copy and re-read it. Five times that night, may I add, from start to finish, and that was that. It reminded of how that book, and reading in general, made me feel when I was younger, one hundred percent absorbed in a world of my very own. Every book I read now I live in the hope of recapturing that wonderful wonderful feeling and I've come close, very close but I fear it'll never again be quite how it was during that first time reading, well, you know what book I'm referring to! And that's what keeps me going, that hope, that memory.

Before I wrap this up, because I know I have to at some point, I've also realized how much TMG has influenced what I love to read nowadays, how it's influenced the sort of book I'm trying to write and it was subconscious at first, I never made the connection until it was pointed out to me. Books about gardens, mysterious gardens, old houses that aren't quite what they seem, old reclusive ladies etc etc My love for ghost stories and magical realism and as I'm writing this, this very second I've remembered a passage from The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. If you haven't read any of Kate Morton's books you absolutely should. They're wonderful and in her latest, The Distant Hours, the main character is obsessed with books and she says that every true reader has one book, one moment. 

In order to write this properly and not misquote, I've just had another look at it and it also says something I think appropriate for this post and my own personal experience -


It's a librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.


How amazing is that? I love it and if the mood takes you, pretty please leave a comment below and tell me why you started reading, what your favourite book is, I'd love to find out, this subject is fascinating me right now!

Thanks again for reading,

 Dorothy, xxx

Chapter one of my novel in the making!

My gosh, I'm on a role! It's taken me about ten years to start a blog and I'm making two posts in one day!! Hah, unbelievable! Anyway, I'm not going to knock it, just hope it lasts! So, it's quarter to eleven at night and I've just finished my very VERY final edit, for now at least, of the first chapter of my book - A Violet Spring - and every fibre of my being is desperate to go over it again but I'm not going to do it. I can't. So I'm just going to post it, right this second, well I'm going to try the whole copy and paste thing and hope it works out and if it does I'll then quickly shut off the computer, run and hide! I never thought I would find it quite so nerve wracking knowing people could potentially be reading my stories! Exciting and it feels wonderful to know I'm taking the next step but oh my Lord ... !! Right, enough procrastinating, here I go! Hold on, I've just had a thought though, is there a word limit to these blogs? I haven't a clue. If there is I suppose I could just spread it over two posts, couldn't I? What did I just say about procrastinating?!

Chapter One

As the haunting, melancholic cry of a distant peacock filled the autumn air, seeping, it seemed, into every nook and cranny of the once beautiful but now forgotten garden surrounding me, I stared up at the house I never really believed I would ever actually see.

Medlar Manor, the centre of my most favourite childhood tale and although it was exactly how my grandfather had described it, already it had surpassed all my expectations.

This afternoon its Elizabethan gables and fairytale medieval tower, smothered in an ancient tangle of scarlet red Virginia creeper which would, I knew, give way to the tumbling lilac blooms of wisteria in midsummer, were soaring up into a sky as blue as a black birds egg, the last of the day’s crisp golden sunshine bouncing off the western windows with latticed glass so old and thick they gave a distorted view when looked through.    

Even from the outside its age and history were tangible, as if everybody who had lived in it had left just a little of themselves behind.

What, I wondered, had my grandfather left behind? And his father before him? 

How strange it felt to know a little of my own family history was steeped in this grand, mysterious place. A place which had, until now, seemed almost mythical, real only in my mind.

But it was, of course, I knew that now and the sight of it brought something suddenly to my mind. A long ago conversation I’d had with my grandfather, a conversation I’d all but forgotten. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time but now I could see exactly what he had meant. Houses like this, like Medlar Manor, weren’t built anymore and there was a sadness in that, I thought, but did it not, in turn, make them all the more special, all the more important that they were preserved?

It was now that I asked myself the crucial question and perhaps properly for the first time since discovering the advert in The Lady two days before.

Could I really be a part of preserving this one? 

There were so many reasons, logical reasons that surely should be heeded, telling me that taking this job simply wasn’t possible. In all of my carefully planned and considered thirty one years, in which very little, if anything, was ever spur-of-the-moment, this had to be the craziest idea I’d ever had. Completely and utterly ridiculous, unrealistic and sentimental. 

For a start, I had a career already, did I not? And what was more a career I loved. Or certainly used to love and very much for that matter. Admittedly, there had been a complete lack of enthusiasm of late, at the mere thought of returning to school in two weeks time a hollow void in my heart I feared I would never again be able to fill but really, that wasn’t entirely surprising, was it, and surely not reason enough to throw away the career I had worked incredibly hard to have in the first place?

I sighed and pushed the questions from my mind, questions to which there seemed simply to be no answers, no matter how hard I searched for them and instead turned slowly to look out over the front lawn, roughly mown and rolling gently downhill to where an old stone fountain stood still and silent, to where a ha-ha, hidden of course but I knew it was there, opened out onto parkland, dotted with ancient oaks, their trunks twisted and gnarled by the winds. 

But it was upon a point in the distance on which my eyes focussed immediately, a faraway corner, slightly to the east by the swimming pond. But I could see nothing, not a hint of the old Victorian folly I knew was there and longed, perhaps more than anything, to see. My heart plummeted as I scrambled for my bag, plunging a hand inside until I felt my fingers brush against the creased black and white photograph I’d owned forever. 

Perhaps my bearings were off, although I very much doubted it. This may be my first physical visit to the manor but I’d looked out over this view more times than I could possibly remember. Every detail, every hillock, every curve of the trees hugging the park, I knew by heart.

Holding the photograph tightly in my hands, for fear of it blowing away in the gathering winds, I held it up, comparing both views but only in the photograph could I see the folly. Two gothic turrets flanking the stone verandah, cleverly designed and created to look old and decrepit the day it was built. As a child I remember listening to my grandfather talk of it, my eyes wide with wonder and yet here I was, the closest I’d ever been and all I could see was a wild thicket of rhododendrons, a mass of vivid, almost unnatural green for everything else had turned for autumn.   

     ‘Miss Flores?’

At the sound of the voice, low and deep, a little husky with an unmistakeable upperclass lilt, I span round to see its owner standing in the entrance portico, my heart giving a kick in my chest. 

Guiltily, I thrust the photograph back into my bag, hoping it hadn’t been seen but knowing, of course, that it had. 

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, I really do appreciate it and please, if you happen to have an opinion about it of course, please feel free to let me know! Even if you think it's utter rubbish, it'll give me something to work on! 


Dorothy, xxx

My very first post - unimaginative, I know, but really what else can I say!

At long long last I have a blog! Here it is, halleluja praise the Lord! Not, of course, that I'm under the impression that the world or anybody in it has been waiting with bated breath for this first post but anybody who knows me, even remotely, will tell you how technologically unadvanced I am so this really is quite an achievement!

Now, having googled first blog post protocol, it tells me I'm supposed to tell you all about myself but I'm not so sure that's right because isn't all that kind of stuff already in my profile bit? Well, I know it is so I won't bore you all immediately by repeating it but I will introduce myself and say hi! My name's Dorothy-Louise Hardie, a name I really despised when I was younger - nobody under the age of 91 was called Dorothy and when I told people that was my name they just refused to believe me. I'd try to convince them  for something like twenty minutes before giving up and saying something like, yeah, you're right, my name's Claire. It was either that or continual references to The Wizard of Oz! A film I would have loved under other circumstances!

Anyway, enough about my name, which incidentally, I don't mind so much anymore and on to why I wanted to start this blog. I've written a book. Well, I say that but it sort of implies that it's completely finished and ready to go but to be honest that isn't quite the case. I'm currently going over and over and over it and I fear I'm never going to know when enough is enough. I'm sure other writers out there know what I mean. If I carry on this way I'll either loose my mind entirely or, whichever comes first, all interest in writing forever. Seriously, it's headed that way, which is why I had to do something. This. My world is very small and I don't personally know any other writers to chat about all this kind of stuff with, to moan with and, on the rare occasions, when I actually quite like what I've written, to celebrate with. I know if I read this back before posting it I'll think it cheesy and delete it so I'm just not going to. Whatever I say now will be out there for whoever wants to read it, without editing the life out of it, as I'm no doubt doing to my poor manuscript!

Basically, this blog will be mostly, I think anyway, about writing and everything that goes along with it. Books, reading, life in general. What I think I'd also like to do is perhaps post some of my writing, a chapter here and there, a couple of passages, anything! The thing is I have no experience whatsoever of writing and therefore I haven't the faintest if what I'm writing is complete and utter rubbish. I know it's impossible to appeal to everybody's tastes, and thank goodness for that because if that were the case nobody out there would have a chance in hell of being published but I suppose what I would like, if anybody out there has the time or inclination to read some of my stuff, is opinions, good and bad, criticism and I mean that, I would love somebody to give me something to think about and work on. To sum up, a fresh pair of eyes because I don't think I even see what I'm writing anymore! Do you know what I mean or do I sound bonkers, there's every chance? And please, if you're in the same situation please feel free to bend my ear, borrow my eyes, whatever, anything I can do to help I would love to, even if you don't want to read my stuff, I don't care!

OK, I guess I should probably leave it there, before this post turns into a novel itself. Actually, I suppose it would be sensible at this point to tell you what kind of novel I'm having a go at. And when I say have a go I mean that because what I write doesn't fit neatly into one genre, at least I don't think it does. When I started I set out to write the sort of book I wanted to read myself, which has ended up something along the lines of romantic fiction with a historical thread, but it isn't quite historical fiction, it simply has flash backs to just before WW1 and I guess there's a little bit of mystery thrown in there as well. It centres around a big old run down country manor house surrounded by a forgotten overgrown garden, in habited by a reclusive old woman with secrets. The title so far is A Violet Spring.

Right, I really am going to say goodbye for now, I hope I've not gone on too much, something I have a tendency to do! Could I just say a quick thank you - not that I think they only deserve a quick thank you but i don't want to turn it into an Oscar type speech - to everybody I've met on twitter. You've all been so friendly and encouraging and I know for a fact if that, my first tentative foray into this technological world, hadn't gone as well as it did I wouldn't have made this blog, so I really appreciate it, thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm off now to try and work out how to put a link to this on my twitter page, you should be reading this sometime next month!

Dorothy xxx