It’s been a busy week! After a long period of inactivity on the Forest Brothers project, I received back the start of the final edit for the manuscript. It’s now looking nice! A bit more detail following my latest trip to Estonia and the Metsavennad part of the story feels much better to me now.
The cover is completed, so we are still on for an e-book release by Christmas and a paperback by Easter, via Circaidy Gregory Press under the very able editing of Kay Green. Thanks Kay, for keeping me on track and treating me like a human!!
In the meantime, I won a few prizes at the Aber Valley Arts Festival. Third prize in the short story competition with ‘Senghenydd’. It follows the thoughts of one of the rescue team as they search through the coal mine following the blast in 1913 that killed 439 people. The event took place a mile away from the festival and the organisers asked if they could use the work in the memorial service last Monday and for next year’s centenary. I was more than happy to say yes, it was written in memoriam and it is so much in the right place. I have also offered to dramatise it in a short play, which is my work cut out after Forest Brothers and the news below.
Which is, that I also won a prize in the Welsh novel competition, which is publication as an e-novel with a noted Welsh small-press publisher. The novel is called ‘The Promise’ and is based in the Aberystwyth area in the early 1900s. It follows the fortunes of a young man, running away from his lead mining home to try and forge a new life. He finds out what happens when life forces you to go back on a promise?. It’s a bit of a rights of passage, romance with the background of the railway construction at the time, without any trainspotters or general nerdy folk! It is actually book 4 of 5 of a family saga set in the lead mining part of Ceredigion. I will have to start another thread for news on this one.
The thought of working on two novels at the same time is daunting and yet very very appetising! Watch this space.
