Another of my finds from old Wakefield Market. The original isn’t in colour but I thought that the ‘Ripping Yarns’ scenes from Edwardian school life deserved a spot of colourisation in Photoshop.
School Exercises
Category: Books
Fire Feet
From my www.wildyorkshire.co.uk blog, 30th May 2004:
A family gathering means that I meet up with George, aged 7, my great nephew. At a previous family party he and I collaborated on a story, Firefeet. George improvised the story – and for once I was careful not to prompt him, or discuss the plot with him, it was entirely from his own imagination – and I drew the illustrations as the story progressed. George kept the original copy, which was just on a piece of folded scrap paper but I was so haunted by the tale that I wrote it out again from memory, redrew the illustrations, coloured it in Photoshop and printed out a few copies on my colour printer.
The Walking Season
It’s a lovely time to get out walking in West Yorkshire and my friend Heather, now living in exile in Staffordshire (which she tells me is also brilliant for walking) has ordered a couple of my walks books for a friend of hers who lives on the fringe of Pontefract’s liquorice country, as featured in my full colour booklet, All Sorts of Walks in Liquorice Country.
I want the one with the walk from the Chantry Bridge to Featherstone. I think it a splendid walk, and the book will make a lovely present for my friend.
Heather
The Robin Hood booklet, also in full colour, also includes walks around Pontefract and in Brockadale, Wentbridge, where Sayles, a rocky outcrop overlooking the old Great North Road, features in the earliest surviving Robin Hood ballad.
I’m posting these booklets to her friend with a bookmark with a message from Heather and an artist’s impression of Heather on a recent trek she made up a hill.
If you’d like these two booklets, along with a hand-drawn bookmark please use the link below before the end of the month. Please message me via PayPal or e-mail me via the link on my contact page to let me know what you’d like drawing on the bookmark.
Links
Two walks booklets: All Sorts of Walks in Liquorice Country and Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire, plus one hand-drawn bookmark, including International Standard postage, £16.00
Rough Patch: postage to Canada
‘. . . earthy through and through. You can feel the garden, the weather, watch the wildlife and smell the seasons through its pages.’
Liz Wright, Smallholder magazine
It’s also a great time to get out in the garden with a sketchbook, so if you’d like a copy of my paperback, Rough Patch (post free, half price but hand-drawn bookmark not included!), please order it via my website:
This booklet has recently proved popular with garden journalers and I’ve had an enquiry from Canada. If you’d like me to post a copy to you in Canada, please use the link below before the end of this month.
Rough Patch, plus International Standard postage to Canada:
Scrivener Novel Format
Just 530 words so far but although I haven’t made much progress on the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in November it has given me the opportunity to dip into the novel writing format of Scrivener, a program that I’ve used for writing articles for years.
Chapters
The Novel Format includes folders for two blank chapters, which you can easily adapt and add to.
Each chapter can be divided into scenes. As an illustrator I tend to think in scenes rather than in chunks of dialogue, so I like the visual approach of the corkboard view where I can see the files and, if necessary, rearrange their order. Each scene can have an image attached to it.
Characters
There are folders too for characters, locations and research plus, one of my favourite Scrivener writing tools, the Name Generator. My characters Clark Rafferty and Vanda Redman were the first names to pop up on the suggestions for male and female names. For Len Platter – the disaster prone TV chef, star of the ill-fated Platter’s Oven-Ready Deal, I had to scroll down the list a bit. But Len Platter sounds about right for a character who’s attempting to follow in the footsteps of ‘backstreet mechanic’ Fred Dibnah and ‘gastronaut’ Keith Floyd.
Each character gets a character sketch sheet.
Writing Mode
When you’re writing you’ve got the choice of keeping an eye on the overall structure of your novel or going for a clutter-free Composition Mode.
If you finish your novel, which I won’t, Scrivener can:
generate a document in the standard manuscript format for novels. Settings are also provided to make it easy to compile to a paperback-style PDF for self-publishing or an EPUB or Kindle ebook.
Scrivener, notes on Novel Format
If I do get around to writing another book it’s likely to be non-fiction rather than a blockbuster novel but there’s also an option for a standard non-fiction template . . . plus templates for theses, screenplays, poems and stage plays.
Link
Scrivener – Literature and Latte
Burnt Books
It might be 50 years ago since Bill’s homemade stereo spontaneously combusted, singeing my books and diaries on the shelf above but, as he’s my brother I’ve never let him forget it!
I still remember the thrill of first hearing familiar records in stereo for the first time. The track I particularly remember was ‘The Shirt Event from Olympia’ by the Bonzo Dog Band. Going from mono to stereo was the equivalent of switching from 2D to 3D. The surprise was that we could tap into this sophisticated technology with Bill’s concoction of bits of old amps from a record player and radio wired together and held in place with tacks hammered into an offcut of plywood. Initially the speakers weren’t even in boxes, they were just lying there on the floor next to makeshift amplifier.
We now know that attaching a transformer to a piece of wood isn’t a good idea.
Here’s just one of the casualties amongst our treasured records, books and diaries on the metal shelf unit above. I got our local printer Mr Chappell to trim off the worst of the charred edges from my copy of Coyler & Hammond’s Flies of the British Isles. Still readable but hardly a pleasure to use, so naturally when I spotted a pristine copy amongst the secondhand books in the cafe at the National Trust’s Wentworth Castle I went for it.
Nor could I resist Guide to Microlife by Rainis and Russell, Animals under logs and stones by Wheater and Read and Small Freshwater Creatures by Olsen, Sunesen and Pedersen.
Novel in November
I’ve never done Inktober because it’s too near to real life for me but when I heard about NaNoWriMo – a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, I couldn’t resist it. It’s free to sign up, if you want to give it a go.
As you can see from my project page I’ve so far written zero words, but at least I’ve designed a cover.
Here’s my summary:
Looking out on the ocean. Currents in our lives and eddies in history. And a bit of marine biology. I love marine biology. Returning tides, a secret garden surrounded by blank walls and blocked doorways . . . and redemption. Just say if you think If’m being too ambitious!
And an extract, difficult to choose an extract when I haven’t started writing it yet, but this was a quote from a recent conversation:
“I used to dive but now I have an irrational fear of the sea. I know where all of the fish live and what they can do to me. If there’s a strip of grass at the top of the beach I can sit there, but I can’t go on the beach.”
Well, it’s a start . . . only 49,950 words to go.
Link
The Gissing House
The George Gissing Centre, in Thompson’s Yard off the top of Westgate, opened its doors for yesterday’s Wakefield Art Walk. This was Victorian novelist George Gissing’s childhood home. His father, Thomas Gissing was a pharmacist who wrote Ferns and Fern Allies of Wakefield.
There’s currently an exhibition of Wakefield authors at the centre in the form of a timeline, starting with ‘the Wakefield Master’, author of the town’s Medieval Mystery Plays and finishing up with Joanne Harris, Lisa Bradley and I, so I’m in good company.
Link
The Gissing Trust on the Wakefield Historical Society website
Around Old Ossett
I’d normally settle down to a session on InDesign on a rainy day but it’s a heatwave keeping us grounded today. In the transfer from my old defunct PC to my iMac, I’m taking advantage of it being easier in InDesign to take images across the gutter.
I’m pleased with how the vectorised place name cartoons have reproduced, slightly simplified into blocks of solid colour, like little woodcuts.
Link
Around Old Ossett at Willow Island Editions, £2.95, post free in the U.K.
Shelf Space
It’s got to the stage where, if I’m buying a new book, I let an old one go. It’s difficult because even the ones that I’m not going to read again usually have some kind of story behind them.
Deep in the Wood
This children’s book, first published in 1987 by Heinemann, was inspired by us moving down to Coxley Valley a few years earlier.
At this time of year, the wood and meadow have taken on the early autumnal look that sets the mood for the story, such as it is: it’s a walk through the wood looking at the way birds and animals use sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.
I included butterflies tasting through their feet and bees seeing ultra-violet but my spread of a pipistrelle bat using echo location turned out looking a bit too technical to sit comfortably with the other spreads.