WICKERSLEY'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS: IN REALITY AND IN FICTION

The Round Houses on Wickersley's historic Morthen Road near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK

Above are the Round Houses on Wickersley's Morthen Road as they are today.

I used the local geography as one of the backdrops for my novel 'Goatsucker Harvest' set in 1855.

These gorgeous buildings, once used as a place of worship and a shop, now private dwellings, are the ones that catch our heroine Thirza Holberry's eye and fire her imagination as she is waiting for Lucas to collect the new millstone from the quarry to cart back to Thirza's grandparents' windmill on the outskirts of Thorne and Hatfield Moors near Doncaster.

The quarries were one of lovely Wickersley's claims to fame, once renowned for their high quality "Wickersley Rock" sandstone. Their excellent grindstones were in demand for Sheffield's cutlery industry and exported worldwide. You can still see grindstones scattered around Wickersley and in the village there are still many beautiful old houses and walls built of the local stone.

"To while away the time, Thirza set out to stroll the length of what she imagined was the main street, back towards the parish church of St Alban. She gazed at a pair of unusual bow-fronted cottages and puzzled how the occupants chose furniture that would bend to the shape of the room. Or did they design their own? It must be like living in a windmill, only a windmill cut in half." - Joyce Barrass 'Goatsucker Harvest' ch 25 "Grindstones and Goatsuckers."

Here's St Alban's Parish Church. As Lucas says in the book, the top of the tower is the highest spot between Sheffield and Bawtry and used to have a lantern lit on top to guide travellers by stagecoach in the nights before streetlamps made night like day!

St Alban's Parish Church, Wickersley, from Church Lane

In the story, Thirza is hoping for a quick getaway from the stifling summer heat as she wanders around the village, but Lucas has met his friend from the Old Hall and is getting more than a little merry and incapable of driving their carriage, as he takes more than one drink at the Needles Inn (now Wickersley Social Club, still an excellent venue for a pint or two!)

The former Needles Inn, now Wickersley Social Club

The Inn stands alongside what used to be the main road between Bawtry and Sheffield, before the dual carriageway (Bawtry Road) was built just to the north in more recent memory.

The Gazebo in the grounds of Wickersley Grange beside the Inn, is a listed building reputed to have been where passengers would wait for the stagecoach, dating from the early eighteenth century. More info here on the Historic England website.

The listed Gazebo, just east of Wickersley Grange

Wickersley Old Hall is still standing proud nearby on the opposite side of the road from pub and gazebo, the road across which Lucas staggers dangerously drunk in my novel. Today, it has been converted into flats.

Wickersley Old Hall, south face

Available free on Kindle Unlimited or to purchase on Amazon Kindle or in paperback

BLOCK-BUSTERS THAT HELP BUST THROUGH CREATIVE BLOCKS

We all bash our heads on them, sometimes, don't we? Brick walls. Creative blocks.

Sometimes the block's as wrinkly and stubborn as the biggest elephant you can fit in the room.

Sometimes the block comes over all soft and squishy but it still ends up suffocating your flow like a massive pillow with odd feathers spilling out to make you sneeze with sheer frustration.

I don't so much get blocked with writing in general. Oh no. It's much more specific than that. It's only now in enforced ill-health retirement I'm getting down to penning the novels I've always dreamed of writing, those longer projects, that the dreaded block taps me smugly on my unsuspecting shoulder.

Indignant me growls: "But I love this story! I love writing it! So why am I more inclined to write my boring old shopping list than pick up where I left off with the first draft?"

Yes. I get blocked with whatever the main project is. All other writing becomes a tempting seductress of a sideline. I can procrastinate as much as I like,  writing other things, shorts, poems, comments, letters, emails, blogposts, serendipitous daily scribblings. Nothing wrong with any of that. Trouble is, the block's still there, waiting, where it was all along. Helping me avoid the risk of not getting the perfect word in the perfect sentence first time around. Not reaching 'The End'.

Once I realise what the block really is, I can face it. I can thumb my nose at it and get on with the job in hand. It isn't an anonymous block, you see. It's that little voice inside me that talks in the irritating critical accent only I can understand.

For me it's my perfectionism.

For me it's my fear of failure.

For me it's my wanting to keep my options open.

For me it's the ludicrous grammar nerdish inner pedant.

It's all manner of unhelpful things. Specific things. Specific lies. Once I've identified them and pinned them to the desk, they haven't the power to bully me into neglecting the very thing that brings me most joy, for one moment longer.

So I self-medicate these days for this common ailment of us crazy creatives.

There is help out there. Help that rings true because it comes from other writers who have been there. Like most of us, they've been there daily but won't quit!

Two books I find especially therapeutic for kicking the blocks into touch and tricking my inner critic into allowing me back to the page, I always keep at my elbow as I write these days. I think of them as my block-busters. My life-savers!

One was a present from a very dear writer friend who had found it helpful.

Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way Every Day; a Year of Creative Living."

The other was bought as a treat for myself after I read it in the bibliography to another of Cameron's books and simply couldn't resist the title:

Susan Shaughnessy's "Walking on Alligators: a book of meditations for writers."

Wherever I open them, there are bite-sized nuggets of good-humoured wisdom. Best thing is, they really help me get past my pesky personal writing-resistant sticking points. Perhaps the latter's my favourite writing encouragement book of all. My go-to lifesaver block-buster!

A page or two and I can laugh at my inner cowardly lion or elephant again. Laugh at it, cuddle it compassionately and more importantly, plunge back into writing the manuscript.

I wonder what your own personal blocks and block-busters are?

I'd really love to hear about them! (In the moments before we all head thankfully back to the unwritten page only we can write!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Sand castles and rock pools: first draft, second novel - taking the clifftop path towards "Cloudhover Solstice"

Scouting out "Cloudhover Solstice" locations: Flamborough Head 17th century Old Chalk Beacon Tower 

The first draft of "Cloudhover Solstice" feels to me a bit like a deliciously playful sand castle on the edge of a rockpool of rippling possibilities, hidden depths. The capricious tides of ideas and words are ebbing and flowing, filling things in, knocking bits down, smoothing jutting edges, revealing scary fissures beneath the surface, the story sculpted by sea frets as the wind veers around the compass of plot and pacing.

I'm back from my eagerly-anticipated research reconnaissance trip to fairest Flamborough, the setting for the novel, from the chalk cliffs and caves to the haunting hidden hollows of ancient Danes Dyke, cutting off the headland from the rest of these islands, leaving it pointing mysteriously out towards vanished Doggerland off the coast of Holderness.

Selwick Stack, Selwick's Bay, Flamborough Head

I took the opportunity of drinking in every detail, smelling the scents of the sea, tasting the bite of the onshore breezes, listening to the rhythms and colours of the seabirds' crying, so integral to my tale. I stood in Bram's shoes as he hears the unsettling call of the Kittiwakes over the water, stood with Thirza as she teeters, conflicted and determined on the edge of the crumbling cliff. I wandered along the beaches of North and South Landing, watching through the filter of imagination all the local sights and sounds that are the background to my evolving narrative.

Kittiwakes, High Stacks, Flamborough

Cave arch, North Landing, Flamborough

I took photographs and emotional mental snapshots, too, of those dominant sentinels of the headland, the 1806 Lighthouse and the Old Beacon Tower, built in chalk in the seventeen century. They must play their part, with their own tales interweaving into the lives of my characters and impacting on their fictional journey.

I took panorama sweeps to judge distances between landmarks, from Filey Brigg in the north, to Bridlington to the south. I explored Chatterthrow, formerly "Chattertrove" beyond Little Thornwick Bay, named for the racket made by the seabirds that thronged the cliffs as they nested, before humankind impacted their paradise, a central theme in my book.

Flamborough panorama from Chatterthrow back towards the Lighthouse

Flamborough did me good, as it always does, not only as a writer, but as a human being. Chronic illness has meant four years of not being able to manage a holiday, and Flamborough has haunted my dreams with glimpses of joy throughout those life-limiting days. Flamborough more than made up for it. Flamborough wouldn't know how to disappoint me if it tried!

Flamborough Head Lighthouse

So the chipping and carving at the sand castle goes on, as "Cloudhover Solstice" takes its own unique shape under my scribbling fingers, recreating and restoring me along the way. I hope when it's ready to reveal itself to the world, you will enjoy reading it and that you'll be enchanted too by this magical place!

Danes Dyke Beach, Flamborough

ALL HER FAULT

ALL HER FAULT

--a poem inspired by a glimpse of Thirza, heroine of my WIP "Cloudhover Solstice"--

Tries to stand

Soles rippling

Beneath the boil

Basso profundo boom

Inching purchase

On sea stamped sand

Plunge forgotten

Now razor balanced

Between sink and scull

Spray rainbow halo

Stinging eye and tongue

Frothing sodden

Tries to breathe

Less and lower

Lower to mute

Her eye discerns the heart

Between two swan necks

As breakers seethe

Molten gold

In the eye of the tide

Breaks her buoyancy

In the undetow

She grasps for his hand

The earthed root hold

Tries to rise

Wings wrung with salt

Drag to inertia

Anchor to halt

The cliffs' billed cries

Are all her fault

© 2016 Joyce Barrass

"CLOUDHOVER SOLSTICE" - the tide is about to turn...

It's been four heart-yearning years since my health let me off the leash with enough energy to let me anywhere near fantabulous fair Flamborough, one of my favourite spots on the planet.

But this year, come gannets, guillemots, gust or gale, I'm going back to stay awhile.

This summer, armed with the first draft, plot outlines, character studies, orphaned scenes, midnight notes, scribbles, dreams and delirious delight, I'm heading back to the headland, the heartland of the East Yorkshire coast.

I'm off to reimagine those chalk cliffs, beloved from childhood, to plumb the landscape for its secret drama, its lighthouse and beacon, its hidden sea caves, stacks and scars, the Kittiwakes crying over the ocean ledges, the spray flinging itself against those craggy gorges and rockpools. I'm going to revisit it all through the eyes of my characters, Thirza, Bram and their friends and foes old and new.

Is that Piper I hear barking from South Landing?

"Cloudhover Solstice" is coming. The tide is slowly turning, dragging all that's familiar beneath the swilkering foam.

In the spirit of serendipity, my arrival on the East Coast coincides with this year's Summer Solstice, with the full Moon poised to shine down on the shimmering North Sea (if the forecast clouds, sea frets and mists deign to clear her a path over Holderness!)

Wishing calm seas and joyful summer voyages of imagination to all my lovely readers!

My first novel "Goatsucker Harvest" is available for Kindle and in Paperback here.
For news of my authorial shenanigans, and for updates on my progress with the sequel, "Cloudhover Solstice," you can always like my Author Page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or Goodreads.

If you've enjoyed my writing, please would you take a moment to leave me a quick review on Amazon or Goodreads to let others know and spread the word? Thank you so much!

Writer's Block Buster: 'Play-date' with my heroine brings fresh insights and inspiration

You know the classic cartoon meme of the hapless character who runs off the cliff, but only falls when he looks down, causing suspended gravity to kick in, splattering him on the canyon floor?

Do you ever get to a point in your first draft when, like that character, you're running along at breakneck speed, creating your fiction with blissful abandon? Then, two thirds of the way through, as the plot becomes ever more clear to you, you grind to a halt, over-analyzing and second guessing yourself ? You itch to edit edit edit, change course, look down, and suddenly you're stymied and blocked, lying splattered with bruised wings on the canyon floor?

That's what happened to me last week while scooting gleefully through the first draft of my second novel "Kittiwake and Cloudhover." My feisty heroine Thirza and my wildlife whispering hero Bram from "Goatsucker Harvest" find themselves hurtling towards the dizzying cliffs of Flamborough on the Holderness Coast, summer 1856. Suddenly, I found myself temporarily stuck in the wet sand, caught in a bind between my writing and editing brains.

So, I was inspired to try to find my own solution. Maybe you'll find this approach helpful, too. Maybe you have your own self-restart buttons to press? I'd love to hear about them!

I let myself skip off for a quick off-piste "play date" with my heroine, letting Thirza tell me, in her own inimitable voice, how she saw the plot, the other characters, from start to finish.

It gave my querulous inner critic the night off. 8000 words later, I had some useful fresh plot twists, insights and inspiration. I'd also been able to "kill" some of my floppier "darlings" plus some of Thirza's turns of phrase cried out for inclusion in future drafts.

So, with a clearer road map, a renewed purpose, rested and refreshed, it's a joy to put my hands back on the tiller and steer for the end of the first draft again.

I'm excited for the day in the future when I can share more of these crazy, cliffhanging emotional adventures with you!

Thanks for reading and for all your support, amazing reviews, laughs, and for sharing my writing journey!

Flamborough Cliff Climbers: Historical Human Cliffhangers in my Work in Progress

The Flamborough "climmers" (climbers) or egg collectors, seen in this Yorkshire Film Archive footage from 1908, YORKSHIRE FILM ARCHIVE: THE EGG HARVEST - CLIFF CLIMBING AT FLAMBOROUGH (1908) are integral to the action of my WIP "Cloudhover Solstice" set in the 1850s. Thirza and Bram on their keel "Thistle" find themselves swept off course, caught up in a maritime nightmare where seabirds face daily peril from gangs of tourists with guns and locals who harvest their eggs for profit and their feathers for fashion.

What hidden dangers haunt the East Coast chalk cliffs and caves? Beached and stranded, Thirza and Bram strive against the odds, risking everything to uncover what makes the Kittiwakes cry and turn the tide of creeping commercialism and vested interests towards care and conservation of our fragile coastline. This quest will challenge Bram's ancestral skills as a wildlife whisperer, his inventive ingenuity and compassion, not to mention his unsteady sea legs to the limit, as well as plunging the feisty and fearless Thirza literally over the edge.

Warning: We wildlife lovers may find distressing the sight of one climmer near the end of this short film, staging a mock 'fight' between a captured Guillemot and Puffin. It is historical scenes like this that motivate Thirza and Bram in the struggle to 'reverse the ravage' caused by humankind and to champion these voiceless and vulnerable creatures.

Watch for future updates about "Cloudhover Solstice" and meanwhile don't miss my first novel featuring Thirza and Bram in the heartstopping historical fantasy "Goatsucker Harvest" on Amazon in paperback and ebook.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Horse Marines and history-based fun and fantasy in my fiction

The last Mexborough Horse Marine, Tom Rawnsley, with his horse on the towpath at Sprotborough, South Yorkshire.
(Picture credits and respect to The Humber Keel & Sloop Preservation Society, taken from Fred Schofield's wonderful book "Humber Keels and Keelmen" published by Terence Dalton Limited, Lavenham, Suffolk, 1988)

The first draft of my new book is going swimmingly, though where Thirza the keelgirl and her wildlife-whisperer Bram, sailing aboard the Humber Keel 'Thistle' are concerned, still waters run deep and it's going to be a very choppy voyage! Though much of the action of my new novel takes place around beautiful Flamborough on the Yorkshire Coast, I am just writing a scene set on the canal bank in Mexborough, in South Yorkshire's Dearne Valley mining district. That's where my heroine Thirza's dad, Jack Holberry, retired from his life as a keelman to become a horse marine, hauling other boats along the canal, as lovely readers of my first novel GOATSUCKER HARVEST will know!

A few of my own waterways ancestors, who give me lots of inspiration for my writing, also worked as boat haulers along this stretch of the South Yorkshire Navigation. I thought readers might enjoy this photo of the last Horse Marine working from Mexborough, Tom Rawnsley, pictured here with his horse on the towpath at Sprotborough to get you in the mood for the drama, intrigue and history-based fun and fantasy in my fiction!

You can  keep up with me on Facebook Joyce Barrass - Author, Twitter or my Goodreads author page. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Writing as sculpture: finding and freeing the treasure hidden inside the rock

Writing feels to me a bit like carving a sculpture: it's as if I'm finding and freeing the treasure hidden inside the rock.

First come the seed ideas, the months of thinking and dreaming about my characters, their lives, their situations, the plot, the research that may never make its way into the finished novel, but which is the solid grounding reality and background to everything. That's the stone.

Then second, once it reaches a tipping point where all the elements are in place and I can no longer resist the writing, comes the first draft. That helps me see clearly the seams and fault lines of my characters, the shape and flow of the plot, the dovetailing strands of the story as I chip away. Now I can make full eye contact with the characters I dreamed up, hear them speak, smell and taste their world more vividly than before. That's the sculpting.

Then comes the editing, editing and re-editing which I love. It's like the tumble-polishing of the whole piece, murdering my darlings, killing dead adjectives, spotting typos, reordering, throwing it out to my faithful proofreaders to savage and sniff out the impurities and howlers. That's the smoothing.

Once it's published and out in the world with the readers it was born to meet, my writing can then be enjoyed and explored by everybody from their different viewpoints, preferences, angles, looking at the crystal with all its different facets, each reader taking away something different from my story. Such a privilege and joy when some are unable to look away until the end, getting what they need from the book I sculpted, perhaps treasuring it as a favourite read to return to again and again, each time getting something different from it.

I'm currently having such fun immersed in the sculpting stage of my second novel, which sees my heroine and hero from "Goatsucker Harvest" going into deep waters, dangers and wildlife dilemmas in a Humber Keel off Yorkshire's Holderness Coast and the sea cliffs and caves around Flamborough Head in the 1850s.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please let me know by commenting and please feel free to share your own ideas and experiences of writing and reading.

Thanks for stopping by!

You can find me on Facebook Twitter and Goodreads



.

Slice of cake, anyone?

Just for you, suggested by a comment from reader Rose, here I am reading the moment from chapter 5 of "Goatsucker Harvest" when Thirza visits Carrdyke House and discovers what *that* coconut cake really tastes like! Things may not be quite as sweet as they seem...

GOATSUCKER HARVEST on Amazon UK
GOATSUCKER HARVEST on Amazon USA

Available for Kindle on Amazon worldwide and FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Goatsucker Harvest: Yorkshire author Joyce Barrass reads from her historical heartstopper

Welcome to your must read moment!

Here I'm reading from Chapter 4 of my Yorkshire historical heartstopper "Goatsucker Harvest." Bloopers, fluffs and all!

In this short snippet, Thirza's Aunt Emma visits Kitson's Windmill to make Thirza an offer she can't get a word in edgeways to refuse!

"Goatsucker Harvest" is yours to own and enjoy in its entirety for your Kindle or in Paperback from Amazon worldwide.

Thanks for watching and for all your wonderful support, reviews and feedback!

Find me on Facebook Twitter and Goodreads

Goatsucker Harvest: Yorkshire author reads excerpt from her novel

A couple of almost bloopers, weird morning lighting and a recalcitrant pigeon flying in for his breakfast in the background.

This is an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 17 "Under the Milk Moon" from my historical fantasy novel set in Yorkshire in 1855 Goatsucker Harvest. Written in Yorkshire, set in Yorkshire, celebrating Yorkshire, here read by its Yorkshire author.

This is a few pages from the middle of the story where canal lass Thirza meets Bram "Dutchy" Beharrell, reclusive pinder and marshman and his kooikerhondje dog Piper, at his mysterious duck decoy in the remote boggy peat moorland known to history as Thorne & Hatfield Moors, South Yorkshire. For the first time, outsider Bram finds a kindred spirit, another soul with whom he can share his secrets.

No plot spoilers here, so you can listen with confidence!
The book is available to buy as a paperback (seen in this clip) or to download to your Kindle from Amazon worldwide.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for all your support.

"Goatsucker Harvest" going global

Humber Keel just like the "Thistle" in 'Goatsucker Harvest' on a Yorkshire canal

Createspace have just told me that "Goatsucker Harvest" will be available in paperback in Canada within the next 30 days, as well as UK/USA/Europe. So if you have friends or family in Canada on the look out for a good read, can you let them know there'll be a new historical fiction fantasy title set in Yorkshire in 1855 on Amazon.ca for them to enjoy in paperback as well as om Kindle? 

Had my first Kindle downloads from Germany and Spain over the weekend. Intriguing! Can't wait to get more feedback from the worldwide audience! 

We writers would be nowhere without our readers.

New and old faithful readers alike, welcome to my fictional world!

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.co.uk (UK)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com (USA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.au (AUSTRALIA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.fr (FRANCE)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.de (GERMANY)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.es (SPAIN)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.nl (NETHERLANDS)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.co.jp (JAPAN)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.in (INDIA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.ca (CANADA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.it (ITALY)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.br (BRAZIL)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.mx (MEXICO)


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FREE Kindle download of "GOATSUCKER HARVEST" October 8th-11th

FREE KINDLE EBOOK DOWNLOAD of my first novel "GOATSUCKER HARVEST "! 

Get it on your Kindle FOR FREE or tell the lucky bookworms in your life right now not to miss out! 

To celebrate my birthday, which falls today at Harvest time, it's a birthday treat from me to you and yours. FREE to download from tomorrow, Thursday October 8th, until this Sunday, October 11th, you can lose yourself in a unique Yorkshire yarn of yesterdays that will warm your heart and haunt your dreams!

Thanks for all the amazing reviews on Amazon!

GOATSUCKER HARVEST ON AMAZON.CO.UK free to download from Oct 8th-11th 2015 

Dribbles and Dabbles with Drabbles

Dribbles? Drabbles?

Not altogether gobbledygook if you bear with me!

When you're writing, "dribbles" often describes the fragmented way the storytelling progresses: a dribble of inspiration here, a dribble of frantic scribbling there, seasoned with a dribble of banging your head on the keyboard!

"Drabbles" on the other hand, are a method I find useful to help pull my "dribbles" of creativity together along the writing journey. I hope this idea may help you, too. Sometimes when those "dribbles" seem to be drying up, a "drabble" or two can prime the pump and get your story-brain refreshed, released and ready to weave those words into gold.

I'm reaching the tipping point of my new novel. The research is done. The plot is arced. The procrastinating side-projects are frustratingly complete. The blind alleys of my storyland are cordoned off with Hi-Vis "Do Not Enter" tape. The characters are alive in my head. I can hear what they'd say and picture the situations they're about to get themselves into. The sense of place just off the Yorkshire Coast is so real to me I can smell the seaweed and feel the spray stinging my characters' skin and the change of light before dusk. I've chalk under my nails from clinging onto the sheer cliffs in my imagination. I'm raring to go! My first draft is beckoning me to plunge over the edge of those risky still-blank pages and swim for dear life to the shore at the end of the tale.

So, when your dribbles run dry, maybe it's time for a dabble with a drabble!

The wiki says: Drabble: A drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length, not necessarily including the title. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

In other words, flash fiction. For me, it's just a great way of getting my writing flowing whenever it stalls. If I have a scene from the novel that's in my mind for later, getting in the way of the current plotline, a "drabble" dealing with that character, that plot twist, that conflict, that setting, is a way of getting creative instead of blocked. Maybe the seeds from the drabble will be grist to the mill of a new story, an unexpected turn, a deepening of some exchange within the book. It doesn't even have to be connected. A drabble can get you writing again when you're overwhelmed. It's non-threatening, expendable, achievable almost anywhere, anytime. It's that blank page clothed in purpose, colour, forward motion.

It can even become a part of your work in progress. It can ignite a dormant creative spark. It can be your own private pool of light-bulb moments. It can be a short holiday break for your imagination to go exploring again before coming home rejuvenated to the work in hand. It can be just what you need it to be!

Wishing you joy and word-woven blessings, whether you're a fellow writer, reader, a fan of GOATSUCKER HARVEST or you've just wandered in to do a bit of procrastination from your own personal challenges today! Welcome!

"Tropical Storm Zeta 2005" by NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center 

Here's a quick 102-word drabble I've written which may or may not get its seat at the banquet in my WIP:



Waves roll upside down, sucking the sky beneath through lips like a dolphin's. Head spinning now.
A guillemot skittles out of a cliff-face inverted inches from her nose. A vortex of fish oil tang closes her throat. 
"Did you see it? Careful! Sit down, you'll have us overboard!"
Disembodied voices far above.
"Below, I mean..." Trying to correct herself, steady herself. The strap creaks. Too much give in it.
Blood-singing, suffocating closeness all around, yet the salt spray's icy, flinging itself down in an arc and falling back upwards into stormclouds.
The scream seems to be her own as the sea explodes.

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One percent inspiration: what makes your writing tick?

Whether you write for pleasure, for a living, for the hell of it, because you can't help it, we all know inspiration's an elusive butterfly that can be hard to harness.

It doesn't take a genius to know what Thomas Alva Edison said is true: "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration."

But in between the sweat and buckling down to write in order to write, each of us snatches at precious personal muses that help to place us in the moment, with our words, our characters, our plotlines, our message, our soul-sharing.

When I felt a bit blocked with my second novel this week, I woke one morning from a dream encounter with my central characters. They reminded me not to be timid and self-editing while the first draft is humming along. Feel the fear and tap away regardless! Characters that are real flesh and blood to me, closer than family, will reassure or challenge me by living the next twist in the tale with me.

Yorkshire bard Ted Hughes's poem "The Thought Fox" explains the way inspiration came to him as a writer. You can hear the poet reading his poem here. 

Set on the Yorkshire Coast like my novel, below is my own latest poem trying to capture how one flash of inspiration for my work in progress came to me in the waking watches of the morning. 

Chatterthrow

They sailed through me in dream last night

My hero and my heroine,

His eyes reflect rainbows over marsh

Her scent of quay and salted sheets

Watched my hovering hand over blank page

Traced their fingers through knots of plot,

Unpicking and beachcombing unwritten words

Lips smiling at unmet characters

Over us, gulls of Chatterthrow

Wheeling and skimming the coffee cliffs,

Kittiwake held against her breast

As he whispers his breath under trembling wings

His palm facing the centred earth,

Her palm raised to the sky and spray,

My hand cradled between their warmth

Telling their story in woven waves

Guiding my grasp to the tiller of tales

Under the hush and howl of the fret

Cogs connect and the synapse sparks

Compass and craft over bar and block

(c) Joyce Barrass 2015

You can get my first novel, set on the peat moors and canals of South Yorkshire, "Goatsucker Harvest" here (some of the reviews may persuade you to dive in - it's FREE on Kindle Unlimited & crazy cheap on Kindle or in Paperback in UK & USA & some other parts of the planet.)

Set sail down the South Yorkshire canals of yesteryear!

You look like you might need to de-stress and chill out for a while on a calming canal! 

Here you can watch a wonderful historic film clip of a voyage down the Yorkshire canals where my novel "Goatsucker Harvest" is set. You'll see the Stainforth & Keadby Canal, the River Don and the watery world where "Thistle" would have sailed on her regular round trips from Hull to Sheffield. You even get a glimpse of Conisborough Castle from the water in the extended version of the archive film, just as Thirza remembers in the book!

 All aboard for your 1959 trip on the waterways, or travel back to 1855 to experience this beautiful landscape in the pages of "Goatsucker Harvest." Enjoy! 

Yorkshire Film Archive: Is Rotherham a Seaport?

Goatsucker Harvest: A "Receipt" for Victorian Intrigue

A few readers were a bit puzzled by Thirza's use of the word 

"receipt" instead of "recipe" in "Goatsucker Harvest." No, it

wasn't an inadvertent mistake!


The title of this 1847 cookery book, "Lady's Receipt-Book" 

shows that in the mid nineteenth century, those two words

still hadn't quite parted company to mean "written

acknowledgment of money received" or "cookery method"

exclusively.

Oh, those Victorians!

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY!

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY to my friends and readers everywhere!

Overjoyed to say that reactions and reviews for my debut novel "Goatsucker Harvest" have been going from strength to strength since the publication of the Kindle Version on Christmas Eve and the launch of the title in paperback in January. You can read the UK reviews on Amazon here and Australian reviews here. All your feedback is SO much appreciated & helps future readers choose to dive into unknown waters confidently! Thank you!

While researching my second novel, set on the North Sea Coast of Yorkshire, this week I had an amazing dream involving characters from both books. This dream planted some fantastic seeds in my imagination and helped to give a whole new spin on the plot that will twist it in some unexpected directions that I hope will delight and intrigue my readers. They blew me away, so that's a good start!

I always find it fascinating to discover what my favourite writers are reading. After all, keeping the wells of our imaginations primed with incredible imput is precious creative lifeblood.

So here are some books I've been enjoying in the past month or so, which I'd recommend if they appeal to you:

"Alias Grace" by Margaret Attwood (fictionalised account of a 19thc female murder accused.)

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell (mesmerising off-the-wall fantasy following the life of one girl from teenage years to maturity in the near future, told in a series of five very distinctive first person narratives. Often laugh-out-loud hilarious, sometimes disturbing, with extra-terrestrial good and evil struggles and including a closing vision of the world as it might well be if humanity carries on consuming and manipulating creation at the current pace.)

"Elizabeth is Missing" by Emma Healey (mystery narrated by an octogenarian woman with Alzheimer's - an incredible read, recommended to anybody dealing with dementia, which might include any of us at any time.)

"The Miniaturist" by Jessie Burton (thriller set in 17thc Amsterdam - mouthwatering literary fiction with a magical realism vibe.)

"Waterlog" by Roger Deakin (I just wanted to pack my bags and swim in all the secret watery places, the rivers, streams. spas, lakes and lidos Deakin explores in this beautiful journey through Britain. Haunting and unforgettable.)

I'll stop there for now! For many like me, with relapsing/remitting autoimmune diseases, brainfog and bone-crunching exhaustion sometimes means reading (and writing) can become almost impossible for wilderness months at a stretch. So when I'm having a relatively healthy period these days, I try to pack in as much as I can, whenever I can!

Whatever you read, or write, I hope you enjoy it, and celebrate it and share it!
Books help us dip through into different universes, timeframes and lives, so every moment we're breathing, we can live a life less limited. What a joy and a privilege, eh?

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for UK readers)

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for US readers)

GOATSUCKER HARVEST (for AUS readers)

Goatsucker Harvest: Naming names

Seeing a SEAGRAVE grave ( my great great granduncle Solomon's) in Gleadless, Sheffield

It's no secret that family history is to me what sitting in his writing shed was to Roald Dahl - inspirational!

Most characters in "Goatsucker Harvest" I christened with first names and surnames that appear somewhere up my own knotty and gnarly family tree.

A beloved sixth cousin of mine - does anybody but a genealogy buff actually KNOW any of their sixth cousins? - was delighted when she downloaded 'Goatsucker Harvest' onto her Kindle, to discover I'd used the name of her own great grandmother (a distant limb among the seventeen thousand plus individuals on my tree), namely Kerenhappuch. Our real live Kerenhappuch was actually a cockle picker, born in 1843. 

I've no idea what Kerenhappuchs in the real world were called for short as a nickname. I only know how many crazy misspellings officials managed - 'Karen Dappack' being my particular favourite from the 1861 census! The name's biblical, one of Job's daughters in the Old Testament, Keren-Happuch, 'child of beauty' or, less meaningful to us moderns, 'horn of antimony'! 

In 'Goatsucker Harvest', I take the liberty of calling Thirza's great grandmother "Happy" for short. Keren-"Happy"-Happuch's only mentioned when Kezzie (named after Kezia, a distant cousin three times removed, one of my paternal gran's Ilkeston forebears) remembers wearing her mother Happy's corset on her wedding day. Something borrowed, like my ancestor's amazing names!

The Holberry family at the heart of the story are named after my 3x great grandmother Sarah Holberry, a Victorian farmer's wife in Hatfield near Doncaster, the area where the novel's set. Sarah's cousin was the Sheffield Chartist hero Samuel Holberry, who died in York Jail, now the Castle Museum, in 1842 on the treadmill, the same invention attributed to Sir William Cubitt, and mentioned with regret by him as the plot unrolls for his fictional incarnation. 

Similarly, the Kitson clan. My 5x great grandmother Diana "Dinah" Kitson, herself a woman of the Yorkshire waterways, has her name used twice in the book, for the family at Kitson's Windmill and as Thirza's mother's Christian name. Thirza herself is called after several of my own distant cousins.

Darnell borrowed his moniker from the surname of my 4x great grandmother, Dinah Darnell and her Darnell kin from the Lincolnshire wolds and coast. I took especial joy in using this name for the Machiavellian inventor, as "Darnel" is also an old word for "tares" or "weeds" that grow among the wheat, symbolic of the troublesome growth not always fully rooted out until harvest time.

The shadowy "Dr Stenson Seagrave" is called after two of my great grandmothers, Polly Stenson & Alice Seagrave. Alice was niece of the Sheffield seedsman Solomon Seagrave, after whose Victorian plant nurseries several streets in Sheffield are still named (see photo).

Bram takes his unusual name from the East Yorkshire Beharrells who were the kinsmen and women of Sarah Ann Beharrell, married in 1871 to a great great granduncle of mine, moving from Hull to live in Rotherham, not far from the canal.

Even "Thistle" is named after the keel on which my 3x great granddad and his son were master and mate on the night of the 1881 census, in Albert Dock in Hull (watermen who inspired me to make Jack Holberry and his family spring to life in 'Goatsucker Harvest.')

So it goes, with nearly every name you read in the 'Goatsucker Harvest' story. Hidden thankful tributes to the ones gone before who inspire me.

Chester, Charlesworth, Brunyee, Hanson, Jacques, Canner, Wraith, Poskitt, Salkeld, Foljambe and the rest. Echoes of the genes that still sing in my blood; family, kinsfolk and their neighbours along the canals and moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Isle of Axholme and beyond, down the centuries.

They aren't the strangest or the silliest names on my tree. Not by far! That honour would perhaps belong to Garnish Broadbent, Kelita Hall (both male) or poor old Original Bottom. But that's for another story!