Of course I couldn’t just write a standard pseudo-Medieval setting, that would have been too simple. So I am attempting a pseudo-Ancient Babylonian setting instead, in a country that occupies a single contentious mountain pass, where they manage to be carefully neutral in the battle between the good guys to the East and the bad guys to the West.

My heroine, however, does not care about any of that stuff. She just needs to find a job.

Meanwhile I am shuffling my websites again, attempting to repurpose my old ‘Beecroft Books’ domain as a website for the raqs sharqi festival – since I hope it will be an ongoing thing. But as long as you are still using this url (the oldest and the best) you shouldn’t notice that anything has happened at all.

You can get it on Amazon here, or everywhere else (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple etc) over here.

~

When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turns her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.

In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?

Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.

~

Currently it’s out in ebook only. The paperback is in the works but I am waiting for the proof copy to arrive so that I can check that it’s ok before I release it.

It’s also currently at 0.99c as an early bird discount, but it will be going up from that probably on the first of March – to the heady heights of $2.99

First book in seven years! I am sick with nerves over how it will go. There’s a lot to be said for a few years of rest. It’s all new to me again.

When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turn her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.

In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?

Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.

It’s just going through a final editing pass and then it will be ready to be released. Possibly even as soon as next week.

I genuinely can’t remember how I used to do this. But I am very excited and a little nervous at the same time.

It’s been so long!

This is a Robyn Beecroft novel. Cozy? Check. Mysteries? Yes, small ones. And a lot of detail on narrowboat life that will appeal to the folks who watch the Narrowboat Diaries on TV, and follow Cruising the Cut or other narrowboaters on YouTube

I’ve just got to go through it a couple times more to pick up anything I missed this time, make it some cover-art and remember how to compile it into a proper novel. (This may take me some time as I’ve had seven years to forget how it’s done.)

It’s a short novel at 53K, but that’s not bad going from something I planned out as a 30K novella. I always write long, but at least now I’m never surprised by it.

Not much else to say, but I feel like it’s necessary to mark these kinds of things, and celebrate. Go me, I guess!

I have, however, been writing all that time, and I hope to finish my cozy narrowboat mystery either this week or the next. All that remains is the wrap up.

That’s only the first draft, of course. It needs a little while to rest before I can begin a first major edit – fitting the journey to the waterways, remembering everyone’s names and the names of their boats, and settling on the final form of the quarrel between Susan and Emily.

In that resting time, I’m going to continue the world-building and plotting on the cozy Fantasy I will be writing next, with the plan to start a first draft of that before I go back to editing The Boat of Small Mysteries.

Thanks to my 7+ years of writer’s block, I’ve realized that I stall out, badly, when I come to the end of a writing project and have nothing else to move on to. So this time I’m attempting to close the gap between one book and the next until there is a seamless transition between them.

I need to mind the gap rather than falling into it. Wish me luck!

Oh, and you may also notice that the website is sporting a fresh new look. My old nautical theme didn’t reflect my interests any more and the menu was borked, so I’ve switched it over to something new. I may fiddle with it a bit more, as it’s stark, but this is already better.

Many things have happened since then – chief among them being me getting fibromyalgia and having to adapt to life as a disabled person. Also the world seemed to be spiraling into depths of misery I had not been prepared for. And after ten years of trying to write as much as I could, whether or not I liked what I was writing, I got such a case of burnout that I couldn’t even write fanfiction for five years.

Now, however, the world has reached such a state that it’s triggered my ‘fuck you’ reflex, and I am getting mad rather than sad. This has resulted in the return of some of my ability to write.

I’ve done a short novel of fanfic at least. Hurray for MoDao ZuShi (The Untamed) and all its extraordinarily beautiful people in the most gorgeous outfits, shouting at each other in pavilions. And now the original fiction comes trickling back too – I’m writing a cozy mystery called The Boat of Small Mysteries for my Robyn Beecroft pen name.

As part of this waking up and shaking off process, I’ve also gone through my books and decided that the two big fantasy novels, which my publishers claimed were too big to publish in one volume, were going to be published in one volume, so there.

That meant new cover art and new titles. The cover art was easy to do, but getting a re-titled book through Amazon’s KDP software was much harder.

Amazon’s KDP software DID NOT want me to do that. It does not approve of me changing anything about the title of a pre-existing book even when I’m trying to amalgamate two or more smaller volumes into one. I’m still struggling with that as we speak

I also took one look at the previous cover of Captain’s Surrender, said “What was I thinking!” and made it a new one.

I think I’m more or less back to where I was when I left, now. The windows have been opened, the dust sheets taken off the furniture and the rugs vacuumed. I have lit a perfumed candle or two and put the coffee on. Now I’m more or less ready to go forward with actual writing next week.

I’m sure everyone has forgotten me, but at least I feel as though I am remembering myself.

I found this:

And I thought that was pretty cute. Plus, I happen to have several pairs of socks with holes in the toes. I do darn them, but I was not going to pass up the chance to get a pattern with which I could make a cute fox out of a pair, AND a bonus pair of un-holey socks for me to wear.

So I bought the kit, wore the lovely red-orange-yellow striped socks, and made the pattern out of a pair of differently-striped socks that I didn’t want to darn.

So here is my Arctic fox.

He needs a name, but naming is not one of my areas of expertise.

I am currently ghostwriting a sci-fi novel, because I’m technically able to write. But I feel like none of my own ideas are worth writing about. I’m filled with a sense of futility the moment I think of getting on the keyboard to type out anything of my own.

I can’t even write fanfiction. That’s how bad it is.

However, the creative urge is still there, so I’m learning how to podcast, with the intention of distributing my back catalogue in audio format. I know from my own life how nice it is to be able to listen to a book while I’m doing other things.

You can hear my trial run here

It’s a very short fic written from the POV of one of Tolkien’s villainous elves, Eol, whose wife, Aredhel, took their son and fled from him. He followed her and accidentally murdered her while trying to kill the child.

There’s a whole load of stuff about elvish race relations and the histories of their two cultures that you need to know before you can really make sense of it, so perhaps it wasn’t the best fic to start with. But it was short, and it let me figure out how to add music, so that’s something

I’m thinking maybe Blessed Isle next? I don’t fancy reading anything with smut scenes, and that one is both shortish and family friendly.

Following that, I’ll start on the novels!

Since I’m not going to be charging for it, and I’m not expecting to make money, I’m going to lump all of my writing into the same podcast. People are just going to have to cope with the weird combination of mm romance, SF/F, historical fiction, murder mystery and fan fiction that is my particular blend. Trying to keep them all apart is more than I can manage.

In honour of Plough Monday, a photo of my uncle George, my mother’s brother, who was killed in WWII. (She was the baby of her family and I’m the baby of mine.) I don’t know much about him, since my father disapproved of my mother telling me anything about my relatives-and I never met any of them-but I know the army sent her his cap-badge and she kept it in the kitchen drawer.

Plough Monday (today) is the first Monday after Epiphany, when the agricultural labourers would be expected to go back to work following the Christmas holidays. So naturally there had to be an extra day of holiday to bless the ploughs and for the plough-boys to morris dance in exchange for money/beer/food at the big houses.

(If they didn’t recieve money/beer/food or a welcome, they would return in the night with their ploughs and plough up the big houses’ flower-gardens.)

Today is the first year in living memory that we haven’t been able to dance on Plough Monday, since this time last year the Corona was only a distant rumour and we danced as usual.

I think it’s funny/odd/reassuring that uncle George could join the Mepal Morris dancers without changing his outfit one bit. I like to think he’d approve. I’m almost certain he’d feel right at home.