An idea for a book

Doing events always results in certain kinds of conversation. So, I thought I’d answer a few standard questions, both to relieve my frustrations, and as an act of public service.

1) I have an idea for a book.

An idea may give you a short story if you are lucky. Write it, because you will learn something. Please do not walk into a room full of published authors who have been doing this for years and assume that ‘I had an idea for a book’ puts you on an equal footing with people who write books. It just makes us grouchy. Also, nine times out of ten you sound like a pompous idiot when you start talking this way in public.

2) I’m working on my first book, should I look for an agent, or a publisher?

No. It is wonderful that you are writing a book, well done for getting that far. However, get it finished, make sure you can finish a book of a good 70,000 words or more before you get carried away. Then leave it alone for a while and come back to it. Most first books are rubbish. This is fine. You wouldn’t expect to sit down and just write a symphony. For the record, it took me three goes to get a book I thought was even worth sharing and that didn’t get published. So unless you come to this as a film writer, with a huge body of short stories, or otherwise prepared and experienced, please reconcile yourself, now, to the fact that you are going to be learning a craft and that the first thing you write probably isn’t publishable. If that’s too off-putting, you are never going to survive the publishing industry anyway, so bail now and spare yourself the pain.

3) Can you read my book/recommend it to your publisher/ help me with it?

No. Authors are often busy people, what with the writing, marketing, research, doing events, and many also have day jobs and families, and need to sleep occasionally. Unless you are a personal friend or we really fancy you, the odds are that we cannot afford the time. Plus, we worry that you will then decide we stole your ideas, even if we didn’t, and most of us prefer not to go there. Offer me a short story and I might be able to read that and comment. If you have a book with a publisher, it’s relevant to stuff I write, and I have time, I might be up for furnishing you with blurb – not all authors have time for this either.

4) What a great job you have, it must be like being on holiday all the time. Or, it’s not a proper job, is it? It’s just a hobby.

There’s a lot of work goes into writing. Research, planning, drafting, redrafting, edits, marketing… there is a lot more to being an author than having an idea, throwing it into a document file and waiting for the cash to roll in. The majority of authors are not well paid and work long hours. Yes, we love what we do, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. Some of us write because we’d go crazy if we didn’t. Some of us have things we are compelled to share. The reasons are many, and creation, for some, is a tortuous act. Every author is different, it is best to assume you do not know what their life is like. But, unless your holidays reduce you to tears and sometimes make you feel like jumping under a bus, no, it’s not like being on holiday all the time.

5) My six year old child writes stories/ wants to be an author.

That’s lovely. We will make every kind of warm encouraging noises to you and your child. Just so long as you do not want us to herald your small offspring as a literary genius, or take them as seriously as we would the author at the next table. No, really.

6) I’ve written seventeen books so far but they are too difficult for most people.

Either reconcile yourself to not getting the same sales as Fifty Shades then, or change what you do, because you can’t have it both ways and there’s not much point bemoaning the uselessness of readers. Hey I’m a reader. I read stuff. No, actually after that sales pitch I am not desperate to get my hands on a copy of your seventeen masterpieces, all lovingly self-published because they were too difficult for the publishers as well, with cover art by your six year old child…

Most people at events are a delight to talk to. But there’s always one and if it’s been a long day, I fear breaking down into hysterical giggles/weeping. If that happens, you know you were ‘the one’.

Co-creating

All forms of creativity require us to some degree, to engage with them as a process. Writing about bardic work tends to focus on the output of the committed creator, but the creative response of an audience is of great importance too. If we develop ourselves as co-creators, we support our own creativity and the work of others. Making something is of limited good if no one interacts with it.

Some media encourage us to be passive recipients, just sitting there soaking up whatever is thrown at us, not asked to think, feel, or imagine. As an audience, I have no time for this. It’s one of the reasons I do not own a television, as far too much content there seems aimed at a passive recipient. We mistake voting for engaging, all too easily. I do not enjoy the kinds of film that are all about turning off your brain and letting it wash over you, nor do I have much time for the kind of music written to act as audio wallpaper.

Yet at the same time, my experience of creative industries is that there’s a lot of pressure to create work that can just be absorbed passively by an audience that will have forgotten you even while it experiences you. I’ve heard the same kinds of stories from too many creatives: People don’t want to be challenged, they don’t want to have to think, this is too difficult, too demanding, they won’t like it.
Some of you do.

The creativity of the audience is something we could celebrate a lot more. When you are engaged with an innately less passive medium (radio, books, theatre) or with something that aims to make you engage, you have to bring yourself. Your life, experiences, emotions and ideas get into the gaps between the words, the spaces between panels, the empty back of the set where the castle ought to be… you fill it in. Your inspiration and imagination takes on the holes in the story, works out what happened before, and what happens after. If you’ve lain awake at night imagining alternative endings for Snape, or establishing the motivation for Lady Macbeth (what was that reference to killing babies about, anyway?) If you listened to Somebody that I used to know and pictured the people, the flat, the whole relationship implied by that song… you know what I’m talking about. It’s not a high art issue, it’s the willingness to consider the social implications of Calvin and Hobbes, and to otherwise step into what you encounter and do something with it.

No two people read a book in the same way. Toni Morrison once said something to the effect that the most important bit of a book, are the things you don’t say. Gaps matter. Holes, ambiguities and uncertainties are all invitations to the co-creator to come in and add their own bits. And so you give the lead man your father’s eyes, and that holiday home you had once becomes the location. You wonder what happened to Christopher Robin when he grew up, and you clapped your hands when Peter Pan asked you to.

Without the co-creator, the art is only half made.

The joys of bad poetry

Good poetry is not easily written, taking skill, discipline, lots of practice and so forth. Bad poetry on the other hand, is available to all of us. We might be naturally bad, or we might hone it deliberately. Bad poetry has the potential for being really funny, especially in a context where the whole point of the exercise is having a giggle. To this end, I am going forth and perpetrating workshops in how to right atrocious poetry, with a view to having a bit of a slam afterwards, and a lot of laughter.

I’ve long been interested in facilitating creativity. One of the biggest blocks to being creative is disbelief. People are often so convinced that they’re going to be rubbish, that they won’t even try. They are going to be rubbish. We all start out rubbish, and no one gets to be good at anything, much less brilliant, without going through the being useless at it stage first. If no one shouldered their innate inability and tried to do things anyway, very little would happen. However, being crap is a demoralising business. Airing your ineptitude publically is intimidating, and that too is a barrier to learning and progressing. So, the aim of doing a bad poetry workshop is in part to give permission to be useless. Here is a space in which, the more awful you are, the better. You cannot possibly fail. All that remains is exactly how awfully funny your dreadful poetry turns out to be.

There’s safety in comedy. When the aim is to make people laugh at you, then whatever it takes you there is going to do it. I’m confident enough that I can give enough pointers that everyone involved has a shot at eliciting a giggle or two.

By going through and picking out lots of different ways to deliberately make poetry awful, we’ll also be doing a thing. Anyone who comes along will at least end up with plenty of features to avoid, which also gives them a better shot at writing some good poetry, if they get the urge. It’s not easy teaching people how to be good poets, but by teaching how to be dreadful, I can at the same time teach how not to be dreadful.

The first airing of my Bad Poetry workshop will be at Steampunk Doncaster next Sunday (16th June). It’s something I’m very happy to roll out other places, too. Playful, inclusive, entertaining, participatory, I think bad poetry workshops and bad poetry slams have a great deal of potential. If you fancy a bit of this kind of silliness at an event, do let me know. If I can get to you and fit it all in, then I will.

Cradle to Grave

I met Kerry online through a story sharing project. Cradle To Grave stories approached me because they felt (rightly) that their work in recording and sharing stories would appeal to my bardic inclinations. Furthermore, they had a Druidy story, and would I be interested? I was, and after listening, I asked Kerry, whose story I had heard, if she would be willing to share her thoughts here. She kindly agreed, and an email interview followed…

Nimue: Having listened to your recording for cradle to grave, I had a strong impression that for you, Paganism is an intrinsic thing, and that you are reaching for something innate. Would you like to talk a bit about how that works for you?

Kerry: The answer to your question is both yes and no.

Yes, in that I need something to ring true inside me. I’m pretty honest with myself and have always found it impossible to play along with any belief system that I could rationalise – as I can rationalise many of them – but did not sound a resonant chord inside me as being ultimately truthful. I know myself well enough to trust my own instincts, and I trust myself well enough to examine those instincts and separate the ones that come from an important place from those that come from an unimportant place! I like the concept of faith – but, for me, it has to come from a position of ‘I feel this to be true at a profound level’ rather than ‘I can abandon my instincts and go with this belief because I’d like it to be true’. That’s why that process I describe in my Cradle to Grave story, of reading that druid book and feeling that dawn of deep recognition was so significant to me. It wasn’t even as if I was actively reaching for anything at the time – I was busy with other things and not thinking about this sort of thing at all.

Yes, in that I feel it is important to have, at the heart of one’s connection with the divine, a personal relationship at a level that can never be taken away, because it is an intrinsic part of me. I have friends who went through phases of adhering to a religious faith in a fit of enthusiasm and conviction, only to examine its dogma in the cold light of day and question its veracity – and ultimately abandon that faith. And I think losing that light once you have experienced it is a dreadful thing. Whereas I know, at a deep root level, that my response to nature is not going to be something I ever lose. And that, as my connection to the divine is through the medium of nature, a secure relationship with nature means a secure connection with the divine. I don’t think I will ever be able to sit quietly in a forest and not feel the divine mystery which lies behind the forest.

No, in that I believe in the divine being something that is not just innate. I am not someone who believes that the divine is just an aspect of ourselves that lies within us, waiting for us to discover it in ourselves. I believe it has a real, separate existence as a deity. My experience of it is that there is a spark of it that lies in each of us, a spark which flares up and expands when it comes into contact with its original source. I do not worship or communicate with the spark of that deity that I sense lies within me – it’s the deity that exists beyond me that I worship and pray to. Sometimes I think that this deity might work through me when it requires something to be done – but I am not the deity and the deity is not me. The deity can be in me and work through me, but is also beside and beyond me – and universal and beyond universal. So in that sense, it is a great deal more than innate!

Nimue: Thank you, this is beautifully expressed stuff. Nature is real, after all, it doesn’t require belief. Is there anything that particularly inspires you?

Kerry: Metaphors. Messages that we see written in nature that speak of a great underlying truth. The apparent death that takes place at Samhain, without which new life would not be possible the following spring. Planting bulbs in the soil – and what they represent in terms of our trust that they will have their green awakening at the appointed time. The fulfilment of that promise that comes with the optimistic green shoots and buds the following spring.

I respond far better to metaphors than to dogma! Metaphors have, for me, a humility about them. They are a poetic inkling of what it’s all about, rather than an arrogant assertion. My feeling is that the great mystery which lies behind everything is so far beyond us to describe and contain in language that any attempts to capture it in absolutes can have dangerous results. I have seen too many cases of people taking the dogma of their faith at too literal a level, and mis-applying it as a result. I also feel that dogma runs the risk of being man-made, rather than deity-made – and, if we start setting too much store by man-made interpretations, we end up having a relationship with the dogma rather than the deity. Of course, I enjoy finding the common ground between the dogma of different faiths – so I do believe they have some value. But not at the expense of a direct, personal and essentially mystic interaction with what the deity is trying to communicate to us!

Nimue: Is there anything you have going on that people might want to follow up on?

Kerry: Actually, I don’t. I just tend to invite various friends over for dinner on the festival days and we have a ritual in the garden. They seem to like it, and no-one has ever found anything to quibble with!

Nimue: Fair enough! Thank you Kerry for sharing. If you want to listen to Kerry on Cradle to Grave, she’s here… http://soundcloud.com/cradle2gravestories/kerry I believe Cradle to Grave are looking for more stories all the time.

Fiddling druid

I’ve played the violin for something disturbingly like 25 years now, which rather makes me feel I should be better at it than I am. I’m a folk fiddler, my double jointed hands not able to hold anything the ‘right’ way, and I play a lot of O’Carolan. If you’ve not heard of him, he was the last great Irish bard, a blind harper and writer of many amazing tunes. He should be required encountering for bards, I think.

My current violin was bought years ago at a folk festival. I knew, the moment I put my hand on it, that this was mine. It spoke. It also did wonders for the quality of my playing. Mine is not the prettiest fiddle, the wood is grainy and on the back has a knot in it, the scroll is unevenly carved, its a bit worn in places. There’s a lot of character though. It’s a fiddle with soul. Sometimes, when I am very low, I’ll just sit and hold the case against my chest. The case saved me once, I fell down a flight of concrete stairs, and the fiddle case (different instrument inside it) got under my neck and head, and protected me. I could easily have broken my neck otherwise. As I’d fainted, it wasn’t a conscious choice to protect myself.

I’ve played over the years, with some lovely people, mostly in folk clubs. I’ve done a lot of jamming. I’ve busked in the street and caused children to dance. Last winter I was so sick, so deep in depression with the backlash from everything I’d been though, that I simply couldn’t play. I didn’t get the fiddle out for months. The cold conditions and a lack of checking meant that an old problem kicked off again, and the back started to peel off my violin. I felt just as guilty as I would have done if I had injured a person that badly through neglect. The violin is like a person to me. A friend. A co-creator. It’s taken months of love and care to put it all right again, and today I stood in a shop, trying out new bows, and playing. My fingers are rusty, the tunes no longer fall easily and I’ve got work to do, to regain the ground I‘ve lost. The violin is well, and appears to hold no grudges.

There’s something of the human voice in a violin played well. They can cry and mourn, dance and sing in ways that call to my heart. Making music with the fiddle is time out of time, it’s a whole other way of being. I need to refind that.

This has been a roller coaster of a week, emotionally, practically. Fights to take on, practical things to sort, progress towards becoming an OBOD tutor, acceptance into The Society of Authors, the closing of a publishing house I’ve worked with for 8 years, an invitation to make an epic journey… my head is spinning. Tomorrow we are at Saul Church and people are welcome to come and draw monsters with us.

Despite the mayhem, this evening it will just be me, and that glorious melding of wood, metal and horsehair with a little nylon in the strings… the magic that is a musical instrument, and melodies handed down from my ancestors of tradition. Time to be on the fiddle…

Official book release day!

Although Intelligent Designing for Amateurs has been available in the UK for a couple of weeks now, this is official release day, and amazon.com will now let you get paper copies. http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369989320&sr=8-1&keywords=intelligent+designing+for+amateurs (and just to confuse everyone, is now saying the release date was the 16th May. Go figure!)

Just to tempt you a bit, here’s one of the bits that owes a lot to revival Druids. It was whilst reading Ronald Hutton’s ‘Blood and Mistletoe’ that it occurred to me that actual history of revival Druidry seems a lot like a Monty Python sketch, with the costumes, titles, claims of ancientness. Which led me to this…

The parlour was overfull of familiar and overdressed women when Justina and her mother were shown in. She looked around despondently, taking in the grotesque excess of decoration on women far too old to carry such girlish extravagance. They clucked and preened like so many hens, the bulk of their skirts filling up the spaces between closely packed items of furniture. Why it was felt desirable to squeeze so many warmly dressed people into such a confined space, Justina had never understood. It was one of the features of her life that had greatly hampered her social development – she simply did not enjoy being pressed against a large number of other people in the confines of heavily furnished rooms.

A gentleman with exceptional moustaches leapt at once to his feet. He appeared to be wearing a white night gown with rather elaborate embroidery at the collar and cuffs. Seeing him only increased the terrible urge she had been feeling to scream, and run away. Before she could plan an escape, Mrs. Easlefeet hurried forwards to make introductions.

“Ah, my dear, my dear, I must present this young lady to you,” she began.

Justina loathed her for that. The person of greater social status was asked first, and she could not, possibly, be of lesser consideration than a man who went about in public in a nightgown?
“This is Justina Fairfax, dear Elizobella’s daughter. Justina, this is none other than the ArchDruid Henry Caractacus Morestrop Jones!”

As Mrs. Easelfeet continued with an incomprehensible list of further titles, ArchDruid Henry indulged in some complex hand maneuvering and offered her his services.

“Founder of the Brotherhood of Restrained Enlightenment, and current leader of the Truly Venerable Order of English Druids,” he added.

Justina took a few careful steps backwards whilst saying, “How charming.” She had only encountered Druids once before, at a meeting of the Society of Archaeology an Antiquities. A lecture about whether the Romans might have constructed on Stonehenge had been disrupted by a man, dressed entirely in clothes made from the skins of very small mammals. He had entered without invitation, stood upon a table, waved a sword about and made a wholly unfathomable speech about classical geometry at ancient sites.

Just as she as paused to flee this current scene of dismay, Mrs Fairfax commenced exalting Justina’s many virtues as an antiquarian scholar. With her reputation the new topic of conversation, escape seemed less appealing.

“I myself have a great interest in the ancient times,” the strangely dressed man announced. He had the kind of voice that would even whisper loudly. “The Truly Venerable Order of English Druids has written records going back to before even the Roman invasion. Our oldest manuscripts are known to be the work of Taliesin himself.”

He paused, and Justina knew she was supposed to be impressed by his claims. Certainly such documents had the power to re-write English history, and that made her very suspicious. It was amazing how many bored gentlemen and obscure vicars turned out to have ancient manuscripts stashed in their attics.

Creative partnerships

In many ways, working with someone creatively has a lot of parallels with romantic liaisons… first there’s that initial attraction, after which you find out if the other person feels the same way about you. Then, if they like you too, maybe you get it together, and maybe it’s amazing, or a disappointment. If there is a first flush of mutual enjoyment, can you make it last? In creative partnerships there are flings and one night stands, fleeting, wild affairs that have whirlwind effects and then run out of energy, and long term marriages. Perhaps the biggest difference is that no one seems to take issue with plurality. There’s less jealousy in creative connections and fewer people will judge you for having more than one creative partner. No one finds bands alarming, so far as I know. There are also fewer formal laws about who can work with whom and in what circumstances. Creativity is not regulated in the same way as love. Creative people get contracts they can walk away from by mutual agreement.

I’m in a long term and deeply involved marriage with Tom, both in the romantic sense and the creative sense. The two are wholly intertwined for us anyway. We do have creative relationships with other people, though. Tom’s been exploring projects with Jonathan Green, Cavan Scott, Tom Sneigoski, John O’Marra, Professor Elemental, and has all kinds of short term things going with people he does book covers for. I’ve not had quite so much going on lately. In some ways, authoring lends itself to the more solitary life. I used to do a lot of music, and for me that was all about the glorious dynamics of creative collaboration. Music is always better shared, I think, writing is not quite so innately sociable.

There’s a lot of intimacy in joint writing. Not least, something novel length represents a lot of time invested in the other person. There’s a lot of willingness to flex required, to explore and get out of the comfort zone a bit. I’ve not had that many writing partners along the way. I’ve started a few things with people, but the process has tended to follow the whirlwind romance shape, in that it is all very lively at the outset, but it lacks something and is not sustainable.

I got online this morning to the deeply affecting discover that, not only is Professor Elemental out there encouraging people to check out Intelligent Designing for Amateurs, but he is describing me as his writing partner. It’s not something I’ve talked about a great deal, but, we’ve been working together on some things for nearly eighteen months now, and as plans for future projects develop, it seems fair to say that yes, this is a dedicated, long term writing partnership. It’s a very good feeling. Tom pointed out to me that this is more of a threesome thing, as he is very much involved on the art making side of said projects. Heh.

So, we’re out, it’s official. At some point I’ll be in a position to talk more about what we’ve done, and are doing, and that’s going to be very exciting too. I’m also exploring some other things, tentatively, with several other people. Creativity can be a promiscuous sort of process, but that’s definitely part of the fun.

And if you aren’t familiar with the dear Professor, he’s here – http://www.professorelemental.com/

The advantages of being talentless

There are plenty of people out there who assume that to be successful requires talent, which is innate. You either have it, or you don’t, and if you don’t, you may as well give up. This leads to a lot of people who don’t try because they don’t see any point. They aren’t gifted, they cannot succeed.

Observation of naturally gifted and talented people, and regular people, of people who have succeeded and people who have got nowhere leads me to think the opposite is true. I know far too many naturally gifted and talented people who have squandered that innate skill and never taken it forward, and plenty of people who are not innately talented, and have worked to achieve. The trouble with achievers is we tend to only notice them once they’ve got there, creating an illusion of natural talent.
The trouble with being naturally gifted, is that there’s no great pleasure in the things we get easily. Many of us humans respond better to challenges and actually put more effort into the things we don’t do well. Academically speaking I did better with sciences at school than with art and music. Straining to make any headway at all, it was the art and music I really wanted to do. I think the only thing I have an innate talent for, is learning. I know how to study, I absorb things fast and retain them, I can analyse, theorise, and so forth and that’s always been easy. Everything else has always been graft.

The trouble with talent is that you pick a thing up, and do it well and easily. Everyone praises you, especially if you’re a kid. You wing it, making little effort, and you progress, because you’re talented. One day, somewhere down the line, you hit the limits of that talent. You stop being able to progress effortlessly. You find a thing you cannot do. This can be a big issue for medical students, straight A achievers their whole lives, who in their twenties hit the first things they can’t do easily and really struggle emotionally with the experience. Finding it’s no longer easy can be soul destroying. It can wreck self-belief. And because it’s always been easy, the talented person has no idea how to work at improving, and at this point a lot of innately gifted people quit and walk away. The belief that it is inbuilt talent that matters means that when you run out of that, you think you have nowhere to go. Someone totally passionate about, and devoted to their subject will push through, work out how to learn and graft for progress, and get moving again.

The person who has more determination than talent has always worked for it, and just keeps doing that thing. They make progress. They may be tortoises to the talented hares who overtake them, but twenty years down the line, they’re still plodding away, long after a lot of the hares have given up.

In all things, I think determination is more important than raw ability. The person with determination keeps plugging away at it. The person who is naturally gifted all too often quits when the going gets tough. The magical combination of talent and drive does show up sometimes, or can be instilled in a gifted youngster so that they know not to rely on what’s easy. It’s so useful to find something you are naturally crap at, and do that thing, to learn how to progress by dint of sheer effort and nothing else. It is most certainly not the case that the person who starts out with no obvious talent is doomed always to be mediocre. Sheer determination will take you places nothing else can. If you have the passion, trust that, it does far more work than talent ever has.

Fire in the head

I used to improvise and wing things a lot, in rituals, and musically. There was a time when I’d happily go out with a violin and play music I didn’t know, with strangers, and mostly get away with it. It takes a certain amount of nerve. I think you could do that from a place of arrogance or self confidence, but for me what mostly enable the winging of things, was a deep belief in the awen. I’d open my heart, and the words would come, or the notes, or whatever I needed creatively in the moment. It never failed me. Mostly I just experienced the inspiration as happening to me, a force rushing through me, and I never felt much ownership of the things I did.

Life changes and a loss of nerve have meant I’ve not been out winging it as much in the last few years. Hardly at all, in fact. I draw on inspiration to write, but that’s usually a slow and private process. If it doesn’t work, no one else will ever know. Winging it in public is totally exposed and vulnerable, any shortcomings made visible. It’s one thing to go out and feel that you’re balancing on a tightrope the awen holds steady, and quite another to feel like you can’t. Depression and anxiety are not aids to the flow of inspiration. They are serious blocks, and anxiety makes it hard to just go out there and do it and trust that you can.

I had some unexpected jamming in a pub with some guys about a month ago. That helped me feel like I could just leap in and do those improvised things again. Yesterday I really took the plunge. If you read the blog – here – about Intelligent Designing, I proposed to write limericks for anyone who shared either the blog or the link. I had quite a few link shares on facebook yesterday (thank you everyone who joined in) and was rapidly churning out silly limericks that included people’s names. Exposed enough to feel a bit edgy, hidden behind the computer enough to feel a bit safe.

So much of creativity is actually about trust. Trusting yourself that the skills are there and you can do it. Trusting the inspiration to flow. Trusting people not to bring over ripe fruit and throw it at you… It’s always a bit of a leap into the dark. It always feels a bit risky, and I realise that I’d become risk averse in a way that was restricting what I could do. I need to learn how to trust myself again, and how to trust the inspiration. Yesterday went well.

If you fancy having a play, pop the book link http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1368694639&sr=8-1&keywords=intelligent+designing+for+amateurs on the site of your choice, and let me know – I’m on facebook, @brynneth_nimue, I’m on Google+ and linkedin and if you reblog to another wordpress one I can spot that. If in doubt poke me here or some other place…

Intelligent Designing

Dear everybody, I have a slightly mad fiction thing out at the end of the month. To which end I will be doing a slightly crazy thing tomorrow to help people notice it. If you would like to get involved with the crazy thing, the information is all at the bottom of this post. But, before you rush off there, please do pause for a moment, because what comes next is the opening of said book, Intelligent Designing for Amateurs.

Chapter One
Anthropological observations of the curious habits of personages native to Barker Street

Hopefully there would be dead people next door. That would liven things up tremendously. Ever since the new tenant was first mentioned, Temperance had been trying to imagine what an archaeologist would look like, and had become stuck somewhere between the beard and the muddy boots. Granny said an archaeologist dug things up, which had formed most of her impression. Temperance had never encountered an actual archaeologist before, and until recently, hadn’t even met the word in person. It was one of those large, pleasing, hard to spell words that she liked to roll around in her mouth. There were others. Obsequious. Crepuscular. Epigrammatic. Meanings did not always excite her young mind, but a word that came with a person had more appeal. Granny told her something about digging up iniquities, or possibly aunties. Antimacassars? Digging up definitely suggested mud, and led Temperance to think from there about the likelihood of dead people. Dead people went into the ground, so it stood to reason they could come out of it again. What else was there to unearth aside from coal and ore?

“Nothing at all like a body snatcher,” Granny had insisted, when the subject came up at breakfast, but Temperance wasn’t sure. What else would anyone want to dig up, really? Treasure might be nice, she supposed, but that seemed more like pirate business.
Still, having a new neighbor would cheer the whole street up. The bigger, separate house next to their little terrace had been empty all winter. Seeing the dark windows at night always inclined her to feel sad.

“How’s that sweeping going, then?” Granny demanded from inside the house.
The sweeping had not, in fact, started, the girl having entirely forgotten about the broom in her hand. Pushing curls of escaping brown hair out of her face, Temperance surveyed the twig strewn path to her grandmother’s door. Sweeping seemed so pointless. The wind would bring it all right back in no time. She sighed heavily, feeling very sorry for herself.

Before she could start on the job, the sound of hooves and wheels drew her attention to the street again. All of the delivery people had already done their rounds for the day. Horse-drawn vehicles were otherwise unusual here. The inhabitants of Barker Street were all very decent people, but not equal to carriages, excepting for weddings and funerals. Temperance loved funerals, but the approaching wagon lacked the plumes and splendid display of misery. Instead she saw a neat little trap, followed by a heavily loaded cart where a great many things were piled up behind the driver and passengers.

With a little squeak, she dropped the broom and ran to the garden gate. Then, because she did not want the archaeologist to think her childish, she slowed down. Walking in what she hoped was a dignified way, she soon reached the next property just as the tired horse came to a halt.
The person inside the trap was carefully helped down, and then approached the front door. There was no beard whatsoever, and no obvious signs of mud. Perhaps there had been a mistake? The trap itself took off at a jaunty speed. Temperance wondered if this was the archaeologist’s wife, come on ahead to make their new home nice. The man himself would probably be in a hole full of bones at this very moment, Temperance reasoned.

One of the men got off the cart. He had wild hair and a big coat. On the whole he seemed a better candidate for the adventurous life, and Temperance watched him expectantly.
“All to be unloaded here?” he asked the woman.
“If you please.” She nodded to the girl who was sitting on the cart. “I assume you can find the kitchen, Mary?”

The girl nodded and hurried inside. The two men set about unloading items of furniture from the cart and taking them into the house. Temperance felt rather puzzled by all of this. There weren’t any bones being unloaded just usual, household things. Unless the bones were in one of the tea chests. She supposed that would make sense, even if it was a disappointment.

“Hello girl,” said the tall woman, with an accent that clearly came from another place.

Temperance had spent hours planning how to make her introductions to the new neighbor. She had already established herself as being absolutely essential to Charlie Rowcroft, Barker Street’s resident inventor. Now, she meant to impress the archaeologist, or for that matter his wife, with her clever, useful nature. Thus, she would gain free access to their home as well. Staring up at the new arrival’s face, she couldn’t remember any of the planned speech and found herself instead saying, “Have you got any dead people?”

Now available for pre-order here -
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368608170&sr=1-1&keywords=Intelligent+Designing+for+amateurs and no doubt other places as well.

So, here’s the planned silliness. Reblog the post, or post the pre-order link and let me know. I can spot a reblog pretty easily, otherwise tag or message me on facebook, @brynneth_nimue on twitter, or drop an email to brynnethnimue at gmail dot com. I will then write a limerick or silly verse about you, and post it wherever the link went. That could be slow and messy with Twitter, but we’ll do what we can…