"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!

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

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.

Like Joyce Barrass - author on Facebook
Follow me on Goodreads
Find out more on Joyce Barrass's Amazon author page
Follow me on Joyce's Twitter
Joyce on Google +

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!

Springwatch Special from the stunning Yorkshire Coast setting of my next novel!

Springwatch Special this Good Friday (April 3rd 2015) on BBC TV is being beamed from the Yorkshire cliffs where my next novel is set! Details of the programme are here in the Yorkshire Post: Springwatch brings region’s wildlife delights to new audience

Tune in to soak up the atmosphere and see the amazing place where seabirds take centre stage. Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes and Puffins throng the coast here. But back in Victorian times, who would protect them from trophy-seekers with shotguns from the city?

I'm already brewing up more drama and a sea of skulduggery and Victorian villainy set between Bempton & Filey Brigg & the sea caves to the tip of Flamborough Head for you all to enjoy!

Thanks to all of you who have been enjoying my first novel set in Victorian Yorkshire, "Goatsucker Harvest," leaving amazing reviews on Amazon and letting me know how much you are enjoying the adventures of Thirza and Bram (and Piper the kooikerhondje, of course!). 

Thank you for helping to spread the word to new readers, who can get a copy of the first novel set on the wild bogs and fens around Doncaster on Kindle or in paperback here: Amazon UK or here Amazon.com or here Amazon.com.au. 

Hope you'll enjoy the next story just as much! Watch this space for more information and batten down the hatches for the reading ride of a lifetime along the cliffs and in the caves!

Like Joyce Barrass - Author on Facebook

Follow Joyce Barrass on Twitter

Joyce Barrass on Goodreads

North Landing at Flamborough, North Yorkshire, one of the stunning settings for Joyce Barrass's second novel

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!

Goatsucker Harvest: Now in paperback, too!

I spent this week climbing the feverish learning curve that is independent publishing. Margins, bleed, trim sizes, formatting, ISBNs...to get Goatsucker Harvest into paperback and out to the small (but very important to me) group of readers who still prefer to have a physical copy of a book rather than on Kindle. They want to touch it. Feel it. Flip the pages. Sniff it. Gift it to friends. Have it signed. Turn the corners down. Caress the glossy cover (is that just me?)

So here it is. It'll be live and available on Kindle and also in paperback on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and CreateSpace estore. I've proofed the proofs and nodded the authorial nod for its launch.

Trouble at t'mill that'll haunt your dreams and warm your heart forever!

Please, if you enjoy it, pop a quick review on Amazon to let others know what they're missing and what they've got to look forward to! Thank you so much!

You can read reviews here.

Goatsucker Harvest: The windmill - titillation, torment and terror?

The old "jog-scry" aka "joggle screen" or "jiggle screen" at Quainton Windmill in Bucks (from the Quainton Mill Website)

How could an innocent old windmill become an instrument of titillation and torment? Even terror?

Above you see a rare example of a "jog scry" or joggling/jiggling screen used in some windmills as a flour grading machine before the invention of wire screens.

The Jog-Scry in Kitson's Windmill in Goatsucker Harvest inspires one character profoundly. Too profoundly, perhaps. It arouses memories and secret, sinister associations in him that have devastating consequences for the people of Turbary Nab.

Disturbing changes are afoot. Humble, run-down Kitson's Windmill is about to become transformed. The unsuspecting townspeople of Victorian Doncaster and beyond are about to encounter something monstrous on their calm horizon. The ancient alchemy of the peat marshes of South Yorkshire is about to be unleashed!

Download "Goatsucker Harvest" now on your Kindle (if you dare!)

[Below are the earthbound remains of some of the local windmills that were in the author's imagination when she was writing about the area with a fictional glow.]

Thorne Windmill by F.W. Jackson

Fishlake Windmill near Doncaster

West Nab Windmill, Fishlake near Doncaster

Lings Windmill at Hatfield Woodhouse, Dunscroft near Doncaster

Thorne Windmill near Doncaster

Goatsucker Harvest: Jem rides into the Valley of Death - Charge of the Light Brigade

Cannonballs strewn up the Valley of Death after the Charge of the Light Brigade
(Photo by Roger Fenton, Victorian photo journalist, 1855)

In "Goatsucker Harvest", Jeremy "Jem" Kitson is first seen in the hospital in Scutari, fresh from fighting in the Crimean War, taking part in the horrific "Charge of the Light Brigade" with his regiment, the 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars, the "Cherry Pickers", on his beloved horse, Samphire. Suffering shellshock and what we would perhaps now call PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), Jem's ordeal casts a long shadow through the events of the novel, though all, as ever, is not what it seems. Tennyson's famous poem, penned and published just weeks after the events it describes, also echoes through the book with its chilling rhythms of hopelessness and heroism:

"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' (1854)

This photo was taken after the Charge in 1855, the year the novel is set, by Victorian photo journalist Roger Fenton, showing the cannonballs still strewn along the infamous "Valley of Death".

Goatsucker Harvest: Picturing your characters - Bram & Piper

Do you picture characters in your head and your heart as you read a book? I confess as I wrote "Goatsucker Harvest" I fell a bit in love with Bram, whose sensitivity to nature, creatures, landscape and intuitive caring is everything I care about. Here's a picture of a real-life decoyman and his dog (like Bram & Piper in my book). Of course, Bram's decoy is quite the opposite of the regular wildfowl-trapping kind! 

I first saw a duck decoy in Doncaster Museum and the spark of an idea for Bram was born. But unlike duck trappers of old, Bram lives by a different principle: the ancient lore of his own people, descendants of the Dutch drainage engineers who came over in the 17th century with Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the peat bogs in Doncaster area and the Fens of East Anglia. His mission is the "Reversal of Ravage", "Omkering van schade" passed down through Bram's ancestral line. But there are those on the horizon who have other ideas. 

Uncover the mysteries of the South Yorkshire peatland moors and meet Bram for yourself in GOATSUCKER HARVEST (Kindle Edition)