And to find out more about what makes him tick, you can read Questions & Answers on the Biography page.
Now resident with her family in New York, Claire Barclay returns to the house in Scotland where she spent her teenage years. After the sudden death of her mother, Claire becomes increasingly concerned about the welfare of her much-loved and now frail stepfather, Leo Harrison. But his own grown children seem more concerned about preserving their financial assets and smart lifestyles than their father’s health.
The situation is further complicated by Jonas Fairweather, Leo’s neighbour, who has become the old man’s caretaker and confidant. It was he who had broken Claire’s heart at just eighteen and she still carries the hurt of that occurrence deep within her.
Now Jonas is asking her to trust him again on a matter of great urgency. But every one of his actions seems to point to his scheming against Leo and the family.
A Matter of Trust is available in paperback in the UK from 1st December 2010, and as part of Waterstone’s Fiction Book of the Year 3 for 2 promotion
The Long Way Home, the US version of the book, will be available in paperback from 12th April 2011
November 28th, 2011
It’s time again for those Christmas house sales where you can stock up with all sorts of presents from sweet-smelling soaps to wicker log baskets. At one of these sales some years ago, I remember there being one enterprising stallholder, a hitherto wealthy landowner and proud member of Lloyds whose syndicate had gone belly-up, who, finding himself suddenly in need of a few shillings, invented a handy device for cleaning Wellington boots after a hard day tramping the fields in search of the odd pheasant. It consisted of a large plastic box with a hose attached to it. You simply stepped into the box and turned on the tap, and then presumably plucked your day’s bag or cleaned your 12 bore whilst the machine did its stuff. I don’t recall, however, seeing many of them being sold.
The problem with the sales is that when you walk around the stalls, you get that same feeling as when you’re ambling past the kennels at the Battersea Dogs’ Home. There are always those stallholders who are stuck in the corner of the room/hall/enormous shed that is constantly by-passed or there is simply nothing worthwhile buying from them (unless you’re in dire need of a tartan-covered brick to hold open a door,) who gaze forlornly at you as you pass them by, their pleading eyes saying “Please buy from me and take it home.” You know that to engage them in conversation would only result in you buying the wretched brick, so all you can do is return their sad smile and sidle on past…until you get to the next stall where the same thing will more than likely happen again.
I went to one of these sales last Sunday in a village hall where the passageway was so narrow that we had to traipse around in single file, trying hard not to catch the eyes of the ‘abandoned puppies’. There was one old lady with a stick and a very disconsolate face who, disregarding entirely the flow of traffic, went the wrong way around the hall, tutting loudly every time she found her path blocked by another fellow shopper. I met up with her for about the third time beside a stall that was selling small knitted dogs, each retailing at the exorbitant sum of £100. The selling point of this stall was that you could order the breed of your own choosing and have it beautifully knitted up. The old dear gazed at the shelf displaying the dogs and shook her head. “Och, wid ye look at that?” she said despondently, “they dinna have ony Dalmatians!”
The girl behind the counter turned her gaze on me, her eyes saying, “Please buy one of my little Labradors.” Actually, thinking about it, they more resembled warthogs…or maybe it was just that she’d kept dropping stitches.
PS. Ha! I’ve been caught out! Turns out the person who invented the wellie cleaning box is in fact a farmer and he made a lot of money out of his invention! The Lloyds man helped his wife sell cakes. Oops! Well, listen, that’s what a writer does – fabricates everything!
October 12th, 2011
We have just had the first Shortbread creative writing course in Spain and it turned out to be the most brilliant success. The majority of those attending were already Shortbread writers, which gave them immediately a mutual point of interest, but then I witnessed them become, over the four days, a cohesive and multi-supportive unit. That really was down to Rachel Marsh who led the course, her calm, laid-back style of teaching bringing out their creativity, but more especially a renewed confidence in their own ability. Of all the things that Shortbread has achieved over the past few years, this particular aspect almost gave me the most pleasure, and I am hoping that Rachel and I can work together to have more of these courses in the future, maybe on a national roadshow basis.
I am sure, over the next couple of weeks, some of the writers will be putting up on Shortbread their own feelings about the course. So, if you have a thought about starting writing or need a bit of encouragement and mentoring on your present piece of writing, then I’m sure that a Shortbread writing course is just the thing for you.
August 26th, 2011
The Edinburgh Festival is on, and I’m heading over there today. Actually, it’s not just one festival, but about three (you’d know that if you’d read STARBURST!) and what’s known as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the largest arts festival in the world – but it seems not a lot of people know that, not least the boss of my US publishing company who, when asked if she had enjoyed reading STARBURST, remarked, “So, so – I’m not that interested in some talent contest held in the wilds of Scotland.” Well, that didn’t bode well for sales Stateside.
Anyway, Florence, my youngest daughter, is there for her fifth year, working front-of-house at a venue called the Udderbelly, which is, believe it or not, a huge upside down purple inflatable cow. I’ve been over already to see a couple of acts – one was Free Run, which features the extreme sport of free-running – an hour’s worth of high octane entertainment, I can tell you – and the other was Michael Winslow, the guy who made funny noises in the film, Police Academy. Actually, I have to say that I met him after the show (that’s the glory of the Fringe – all the entertainers mix with the audience after their acts,) and he wasn’t that easy to talk to. I said this to Florence and she said, “Well, he does just make noises for a living, Dad.”
Florence always comes up with the right thing to say. Once, when she was eleven years old, she and I went to the local Tesco supermarket to buy something for supper. On the way there in the car, she was very silent and then said, “Dad, did you marry Mum for her looks or her personality?” I immediately remarked that it was a very good question, and then went on to explain that we were very young when we met, that we became really good friends and that she was (and still is, I have to say!) very pretty. “So,” I said, “it was a mixture of the two things.”
“Right,” said Florence. She seemed satisfied with my explanation because she didn’t say anything until we had completed our shopping and we were heading home in the car.
“Dad,” she said eventually.
“Yes, Florence.”
“I think Mum probably married you for your personality.”
Out of the mouths of babes….
If you haven’t been to the Edinburgh Festival, you should really try to get there. The atmosphere is quite incredible. Or, alternatively, you could read STARBURST…
June 20th, 2011
It’s been a bit of a strange time, these past few months. I headed off in April to the house in Spain and, on one particular evening, had a brilliant moment of clarity, seeing exactly how the new book was going to begin. I was up early the next morning, got myself organized with the laptop and a cup of tea, set up the first page and started to type. Three words in, the phone rang. It was news that a good friend of mine, whom I knew to have terminal cancer, was not expected to last more than two or three days. He had called me to the hospice a couple of weeks before to ask if I would give his fourteen year-old daughter a hand to organize his funeral. There is no way that one refuses that kind of request – but I honestly hadn’t expected him to go downhill so fast. So I switched from the fledgling chapter to the internet and booked myself a flight home, and headed off leaving my wife alone in Spain.
I arrived back in time, but then consequently found that he had also made me an executor of his will, and the whole process of sorting out his estate took the best part of five weeks. Since then, other things have occurred which have got in the way of writing; my fellow director of Shortbread stories opted out, leaving me to find a new direction for it – that’s still on-going; a wild wind hit Scotland hard about a month ago and devastated an avenue of 250 year-old oak trees that arch over the main road at the bottom of the farm track. The local council maintained that half of the trees belonged to me, so, with every tree surgeon in Scotland engaged in clearing the widescale damage, I was left with little option other than to break out the chainsaw and get clearing. And then, on top of that, an elderly member of my family was not well, so that was another thing to deal with.
This is not a moan, actually. These things happen, of course, and ‘worser still happens at sea.’ But I haven’t yet got back to ‘zoning’ in on the book. It’ll happen – but not just yet.
March 23rd, 2011
Last year, Kirsty and I were invited to go to Lamu in Kenya for a week. We thought, well, that’s a long way to go – just for a week, so we thought we’d go for two and find something else to do meantime. We ended up ‘being useful’ in a small orphanage about a 4-hour drive north of Nairobi in the lee of Mount Kenya – 26 kids aged between 10 and 17, all there because of HIV and home and sectarian violence. In the short time that we were there, we came to realize that, besides the obvious material requirements, the children were wanting consistency – not just some people breezing into their lives and out again – and, at the end of our stay, when Kirsty said that we’d be back, it was pretty obvious from the expression on their faces that they didn’t believe her. So we proved them wrong and returned to the orphanage two weeks ago. And Alice, my eldest daughter, went out there last September and spent a month with them. There’s no doubt that she was the one that made the BIG difference.
So, in a nutshell, this is what I learned from the experience this time;
a) White people do not walk along the side of the road like Kirsty and me – they all have Land Cruisers and appear unsettled by us doing this.
b) Kenyan kids don’t like to say thank you. They find it difficult, maybe even demeaning, so you just don’t push it with them.
c) You have to be so careful with what you buy for these kids. They cannot be made to stand out from the crowd or appear privileged, otherwise parents who are struggling to keep their family unit together might feel that their kids would be better off in the home.
d) Questions were asked like “Are you doing this to make yourself feel better? Are you a do-gooder?” We didn’t take that one any further. I just said that I was a writer – I think that says enough, doesn’t it?
e) Their church services are a complete riot. When the lesson is read, it is accompanied by a series of disjointed notes and drum and cymbal beats from young Dennis’s keyboard. These are relayed to the whole township by way of one of the largest speakers I have ever seen that sits outside the door of the church. After the service, the amplifier is plugged into a CD player, Dennis’s stuttering tune is replaced by Kenyan reggae, and all the kids traipse out in their Sunday finery and they dance for hours right there in front of the church – and boy, can they dance!
f) Visiting the local Sunday market to buy them all designer trainers (at £3 a pair), Kirsty and I stood outside (our pallid complexions would have pushed up the prices by at least 200%) and the kids went in to ‘bar-gain’. They would then come rushing out, tell us the deal they’d got and I would have a clandestine rootle in my wallet for some money and hand it to them with a solid shake of the hand, rather like tipping a hotel bell hop. It was pretty important that the transfer of money was not seen, otherwise vast crowds would have gathered. I came to be known as the Bank of Kenya.
g) My farewell remark to Ma Esther Mwiti, whose vision it was in founding the children’s home, was that the kids had left Kirsty and I both emotionally and financially drained.
Alice is going back in September and we no doubt will return next year. I suppose they’re really all family now.
