Hello and welcome to my new blog: Of Sandstone and Cockleshells.

 Hello everyone.

Time to move on from the Abbeywatch blog. There's so much more I want to write about. It's all I've done for the past two years. And now, three novels in, half of a Masters course completed and many thousands of local steps taken, it's time to put the beauty of our town and its surrounding area back out there again. Nature writing holds a huge attraction for me, and I've read some wonderful books lately. But I'm a fan of local history too, and Barrow certainly has a story to tell. Abbeywatch often had some literary writing within it-the written word has been important for this introvert for all of her life. So, this new blog will combine those three loves of my life, along with the fourth- Steve Hillman and his photographic genius.

   All three of my novels are set in Barrow: our landscape has so many stories and evokes many more.

Seaview House is a literary mystery set on Walney, with alternating timelines-1976 and 2018.

Tunnel Cottage is set around the Furness Abbey area, and is a literary mystery/romance.

Ellerslie is set in Barrow and based around the actual house of that name, and is a kind of literary thriller.

All are in the hands of my agent (Clare Coombes at The Liverpool Literary Agency) and Seaview is currently out on submission, so who knows- one day, a best-seller could put our town on the map in a totally new way!

Anyhow, that's a short introduction to the new blog. I've been sitting at my computer for so many months now, and miss interaction with people that isn't behind a Zoom or Teams screen, so get in touch if you like: I'm going to work on the first proper blogpost this week and should be ready to post by the weekend.

Paula H

P.S. Starting with a favourite image!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abbey Road: Part one.

Image
  You can’t be a Barrovian, born, bred or both, without Abbey Road holding a place in your heart. Driving, walking, bussing, cycling, there’s not much option but to include it in your journey. I walk parts of it nearly every day, especially the bit my son christened Conker Alley . If you’ve walked between St. Paul’s and Monk's Croft at this time of year, you’ll understand why. Monk's Croft.... there's a name to conjure with. From the sandstone drinking trough, to where the iconic White House Hotel used to stand, the houses- those still in evidence and those long gone- tell a story. And quite a compelling one.  These structures aren't linked by time, but by sandstone. If you live here, you know. But the bigger houses that line this route into the town have their own story to tell.  Our family lived, for a short while, in the house that William Gradwell Jnr. built for himself. His father, William Gradwell Snr. was perhaps the most important man in terms of the building of...
Read more

How Tun Woods.

Image
  Early autumn day, dove-grey skies, 15 degrees centigrade, ash leaves down and beeches turning.  Boots on and time to walk in the fifteen acre, man-made patch of woodland at the top of Ormsgill Quarry.     It’s a broad-leaf woodland, only twenty-one years old, so isn’t mature by any means- it was planted over an area originally a wide expanse of school playing field. It was possible to walk right to the edge of the sandstone quarry in those days. That’s been screened off with fences and clever planting now, thank goodness. On the first day of a teaching practice at Ormsgill School, a pupil lifted his shirt and showed me a scar running from neck to belly-button from when he fell off the quarry and landed on a washing machine! Walney could be easily seen from the edge, back then. Not so easy now, but the views are still stunning.  Early autumn has been full of heavy rain and softer temperatures, so nature’s die-back isn’t in full swing in How Tun Wood. The p...
Read more