A little bit of self-promotion

I've just joined The Independent Author Network. You can see my page at http://t.co/a6S3T87xC3 It would seem that in order to succeed as an author, you have to spend more time trawling the internet for new ways to flag the interest of new readers than you do writing. There are any number of platforms out there that I have yet to get to grips with; Tumblr,  Pinterest, Stumbleupon, etc. I see that Reddit has survived from quite a way back, but I'm sure that there used to be a load of other services like it that have gone the way of the dodo. Ah well, it is a fast changing world online. Anyone been on Friends Reunited recently?

Hal-an-Tol!

Hal an tol, jolly rumble-oh!

We've been up long before the day-oh!

To welcome in the summer

To welcome in the May-oh!

For summer is icumen in

And winter's gone away-oh!

Here we stand, as the sun rises on the month of May. The BBC is probably poised to launch its Springwatch programme on us yet again. Yet there we have one of our oldest folk songs telling us that we are welcoming in the summer, for it is but six and a half weeks to midsummer. I know that I have technically jumped the gun on the actual date of the ancient festival of May Day (also known as Beltane (Irish) or Calen Haf (Welsh)) by a few days, but the words of the song clearly speak of welcoming in the May, so I have timed this post to go out at sunrise in Newcastle upon Tyne on the 1st of May.

Will I have been up long before the day? Probably, probably not! Let's just hope that it feels like the beginning of summer.

Why am I so fascinated by all of this? It is a reaction to something that always annoys me in desk diaries, which tell me that summer begins on the 21st June, which is patently nonsense. More importantly, when I am writing of times which did not have this sort false view of the seasons, if I talk about "the beginning of summer" I need it to be clear that I am talking about early May, not late June.

Tweet! Tweet!

Well, my publisher keeps pestering advising me to have a higher profile, so I have joined Twitter. This is actually the second time I have done this, but although I can now see my old account, it won't let me update it or send me a password reminder, so @Gruffling is in limbo and @KevinFuters is live.

Trolls

I really felt that my trolls had to be something both like and unlike humans. They have an earthy, stony quality, but they are not made of stone. They look quite human in their body proportions and many of them are either much taller or much smaller the human average. I use the name Orcneas for them, using a word used once to describe Grendel in Beowulf. English did not have a word cognate with troll, it seems to have come into mainstream English usage in the 19th century, although it is recorded in the 17th century in a witch trial from the Shetlands.

I hint that trolls eventually leave Britain in order to find lands less densely inhabited by men; that they now live in Iceland and Scandinavia.During the 7th century they live in areas which are sparsely populated, but the human population is already on the increase and new lands are being cleared for human settlement and agriculture. In Northumberland, the spine of hills that we now call the Pennines meets the Cheviot Hills and the Southern Uplands of Scotland. This area is perfect for the trolls, and this is the area referred to as Trolldom in the book. There are other trolls living outside of Trolldom; one lived near Yeavering under a bridge over the River Glen. Communications with trolls living south of Hadrian's Wall have been lost, so there is no news of any who may have been alive further south.

Trolls and humans can have children together, although it is clear from what Alfreda says that trolls consider humans to be ugly - and most humans similarly consider the trolls to be ugly. Fortunately this is not always the case! Half-trolls may exist, and over time their descendants merge fully into the human population.

The other project

I have referred to it elsewhere on this blog as "the other project." Well, if you are interested in finding more about it, I have uploaded it onto Authonomy where it is free to view in its unedited form. To view it you will need to be a member of Authonomy; a website run by Harper Collins which allows authors to showcase their work in the hope of receiving constructive criticism and (hopefully) attracting the attention of the editors at Harper Collins or even another publisher.

So, what is the other project? The title it is currently lurking under is "Cædmon: The Lord's Poet."

"Here, my friend, take the harp. I am sure you can entertain us with a fine lay!"

When his lord makes him swear an oath never to sing his greatest composition again, and carrying a burden of additional lies and slanders, Cædda seeks refuge in anonymity and exile as a slave near remote Streneshalh.

His past returns to haunt him when a menacing stranger appears at the Winterfilling Feast, calling upon him to sing.

Eluding his pursuer, he finds refuge in an isolated cow byre. As he contemplates his life story and his immediate situation, he must make a final decision.

Can the Lord’s Poet avoid retribution again, or is it time to rise to the challenge and embrace his destiny?

Candlemas (again)

Steve Ashley sings a "Candlemas Carol" which begins:

"Oh, Candlemas beware old man

The wind gale and the storm,

For if you think that winter's dead

It's barely been born,

And if you think that the spring has come,

With the bright sun in the sky

An icy wind blows icy tears

From the corner of your eye"

I posted last year about Candlemas, and here I am again. This year it is much colder and I am more inclined to appreciate Steve Ashley's point. So, how to reconcile the conflict between a logical division of the year by length of the day and our observation that there continues to be cold weather after winter (and for that matter warm weather after summer).

I see two factors at work here, the first being that it should be possible to divide the year up into two "great seasons" of warmth and coldness and that the boundary would therefore be the equinoxes, the dates when the day and the night are both twelve hours long (give or take a few minutes). With this pattern, half of spring would fall within the greater winter and the other half would fall in the greater summer. The same apply to autumn.

The other factor is the physical laws relating to the conservation of heat. It feels like summer through August and into September because the energy provided by the sun is still present as warm atmospheric conditions and warm land surfaces. February and early March feel like winter because a lot of the sun's heat is taken up  just with heating that mass of air and the upper layers of the surface.

Blog tidy-up

I have created a new page on this blog which brings together the posts that relate to the book. You can find all of this information here. I have deleted the older posts that this information is derived from.