Word Wenches

What We're Reading — February 2018

Anne here, hosting our discussion of the books we've read in February.  

We start with Pat's find of the month, THE READERS OF BROKEN WHEEL RECOMMEND, by Katarina Bivald. Pat says: I love this book! It’s a quiet book about a quiet book reader who summons the nerve to leave Sweden to visit an elderly penpal in a quiet small town in Iowa. Not just a quiet small town, but a broken one. The economy has struck the town hard. Residents have mostly died or moved away.

Amy, the penpal Sara comes to visit has also died, but the town insists that Sara stay in Amy’s home because they all knew how much Amy enjoyed reading her letters and how much Amy had been looking forward to her visit. Stunned by her situation, by the graciousness of the residents, and by the enormous library of books in Amy’s empty house, Sara quietly begins to change everything without even realizing she’s doing so.

There’s even a quiet romance. It’s an amazing journey for readers who loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Highly recommended! (And right now, it's only $2.51 at Amazon)  (Anne adds that she and several wenches have read and enjoyed this book, bought on Janga's recommendation on this blog back in September. Thank you Janga.)

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Mary Jo is sailing down a river: Her recommendation this month is The Rivers of London Series, by Ben Aaronovitch. The first book in the series is: Midnight Riot, PC Peter Grant, Book 1

Said to be a cross between CSI and Harry Potter, this series has been mentioned by a couple of other Wenches, Joanna and Pat, perhaps.  I was a little leery since I couldn't quite figure out what it was about, but once I read an excerpt of the first book, Midnight Riot, it made perfect sense.  In a fantasy-ish sort of way.  <G>

Peter Grant is a diligent young London constable with a mother from Sierra Leone and a father who is a talented but often addicted jazz musician.  His mixed heritage plays into the story in various ways, including his being a bit of an outsider.  He become much more of one when he has a chat with a ghost and is seen by a DCI Thomas Nightingale, who turns out to be the only licensed wizard in Britain and in charge of investigating all crimes involving magic and 'other beings.'

In no time at all, Peter is working for him as an apprentice wizard, which turns out to be dangerous but far more interesting than being a police paper shuffler.  Peter is a great character--smart and funny and committed to helping people even when it takes him into mortal peril.

New Southern Seas

by Mary Jo

I like having four seasons, I like when the snow lies on the ground 'deep and crisp and even,' and I don't mind sunny days with sub-freezing temperatures. Nonetheless, a mid- winter break to a warmer place is always welcome, and often that means a Caribbean cruise.

This year's cruise started in Panama, followed the Central American coast north, and visited Cozumel and Key West before ending in Ft. Lauderdale. We chose it because the itinerary included places we'd never been before.

When They Say Nothing At All

Susanna here, still on deadline and dusting off old posts again, but this time on a subject that's been on my mind a lot while I've been working on this new novella.

Hugh MacPherson, the historical hero of my book A Desperate Fortune, was probably the most stubborn and difficult man I've ever written, taking "strong and silent" to a new extreme for me, sometimes refusing to speak at all when he was in a scene. And even though I'm writing from Hugh's point of view in this novella, and so at least have a better idea of what's going on in his thoughts (though he's still maddeningly non-talkative), I'm finding his actions and gestures are still more important.

Going Dutch at Dyrham Park!

Nicola here. Today I’m doing one of my virtual tours of an English stately home. On Monday, author Anna Campbell and I went on a day trip, as we tend to do when she is over visiting from Australia. This time our destination was Dyrham Park, a seventeenth century house near Bath which looks like a miniature version of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke of Devonshire. Dyrham was built at a very interesting time by a very interesting man: William Blathwayt, who started life as the son of a debt-ridden gentleman and ended a very rich man who made his fortune in the service of several monarchs.

Dyrham was built in the 1690s, when the Stuarts were on the throne but the dynasty had changed direction somewhat after James II was deposed and his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William had become joint King and Queen. William Blathwayt was very much a supporter of King William and he used the new house he was building at Dyrham Park to demonstrate his loyalty.

At a time when most houses were built out of local materials, Dyrham was an “international” house as William Blathwayt was able to use his extensive contacts in England and abroad to provide the raw materials. He ordered marble from Genoa, pine and spruce from Norway, and black walnut and red cedar from North America. In terms of furnishings, William had experienced first hand the fashionable style of the court. He imported a trunk of luxury items from the Netherlands including various printed silks and cottons with exotic designs, fine damask silks and crimson velvets. The interior of the house looks very rich and bright today; in candle light it must have seemed very lustrous and luxurious.

My favourite part of the house was the staircase, which was constructed out of black walnut and red cedar from Virginia and Carolina. Other American timber used in the construction was pine and cypress. It’s astonishing to look at the staircase today and imagine the journey made by those timbers all the way from the rivers of North America across the Atlantic to Bristol and London. The transport caused lots of problems because often the planks 18 – 24 feet in length, were too large for the ships or the captains charged huge fees to transport it! When some of the timber was brought up the Thames from London, the wood had cost £40 and the transport cost £10, an exorbitant sum. However Blathwayt was a rich man and wanted the best for his house – and the best was what he got!

The strong Dutch influence in the house is still visible today in the gilt leather panelling on the walls and the many pieces of Delft ceramics. A number of the paintings are also by Dutch artists including the amazing “A view through the house” by Samuel van Hoogstraten, which captures a moment when a door opens and the viewer sees the world within. I loved this picture and wanted to step into it – or write a story set inside it! Another gorgeous picture was of a cocoa tree and a roasting hit; it illustrates the process of turning cacao into chocolate!

William’s library was the jewel of his house, a sentiment that we could totally endorse! He had a huge collection of books on law, history, religion, geography, politics and philosophy. He also had a number of dictionaries – as a fluent Dutch speaker, which was very rare in England, he was very interested in languages.

The furniture on display in the house still contains a number of items from William Blathwayt’s original 17^th century collection, most notably the state bed. This is a towering wooden four poster covered in crimson and gold silk, velvet and satin. Like so many beds from the period it looked very narrow and uncomfortable to me, more a single bed than a double, let alone a king or Queen size. The legend is that was ordered to encourage Queen Anne to come and visit when she was in Bath. Sadly she didn’t call!

King William and Queen Mary were keen gardeners and one of the ways for courtiers to curry favour was by copying their garden style, which Blathwayt did to great effect at Dyrham. Even on a dull day in winter the gardens looked gorgeous, with exotic trees, water cascades and elegant walkways. Blathwayt used both the trees and the statuary to declare his loyalty to the king;  there is an orangery at Dyrham full of orange trees, a not particularly subtle tribute to the fact that William III was from the House of Orange! A statue of Hercules also draws comparisons with the king, suggesting that he is a courageous and virtuous hero. There’s nothing like a bit of flattery to ingratiate yourself with the monarch!

My favourite aspect of the garden, though, was the fact that William, a businessman to the last, had declared that the estate must be as self-sufficient as possible when it came to fruit and vegetables. He was quite ahead of his time with this ecological view and grew a range of apples and pear trees for cider and perry production, quince for jam and various other “organic” crops! He came unstuck with the mulberry bush, however, as he had planned to cultivate white mulberries to encourage silkworms but unfortunately he imported the black mulberry instead. It still bears fruit but the silkworms aren’t interested!

Visiting Dyrham Park was gorgeous but I did come away wondering about the concept of demonstrating your loyalty to a person or a cause through the way you decorate your home. Presumably if William Blathwayt had fallen out of favour with the King he would have had to re-decorate his house and re-design his garden!

If you were to design your house or garden as a tribute to a famous person, who would it be? Would you honour them with plants, statues, pictures or something unique and different?

The Importance of Covers

Anne here and today I'm musing on the importance of covers.
Most of us, firmly believe that we "don't judge a book by its cover" and yet, a lot of the time I suspect we do.  People make instant, often subconscious, judgements about what they will or will not pick up. Maybe we don't judge the book itself, but the kind of cover it has will influence us — incline us in favor of finding out more, or deciding us against it without even opening a page. 

A good book cover should achieve a number of things. First and foremost it should attract readers, intrigue them, make them want to pick up the book and examine it. It shouldn't be too "busy" -- the title and the author's name should stand out and be read at a glance — and in these days of purchasing books on line, they need to be readable on a screen in tiny thumb-nail size.

It needs to give the reader an idea of what the book is about, what genre — romance, a crime novel, fantasy or whatever — and referencing the plot in some way. is it set in a medieval castle, are the characters at war, is it a road trip? Are there vampires? Dragons? A murder? 

What kind of reader were you as a kid?

Joanna here, asking the Wenches "What kind of reader were you as a kid?"
Maybe I'm asking, where do adult readers come from?

 

Anne begins:

 

What kind of reader was I?

In a word? Insatiable — and I still am now. By day I was happy to be out and about, playing and exploring with my dog, but come night-time it was essential to my happiness that I always have something to read. (We didn't have TV -- my father didn't approve of it.) I don't remember not being able to read, but probably that's because my parents and siblings read to me a lot. AA Milne — the poetry as well as the Winnie the Pooh stories, Pookie the flying rabbit, whatever they had, and once I could read I read everything I could lay my hands on. Not so much cereal boxes though — for me it was stories every time. Enid Blyton was a very prolific English children's writer, and I read everything I could find of hers, starting with Noddy, then The Magic Faraway Tree, and moving on to the Famous Five and many other series.

We always went away at Christmas (which are our long summer holidays) and my presents always included a book or two, so in the caravan or tent I read  my new books and then went on to read my brother's and sisters' books, even though they're a decade older than me. 7 isn't much of a playmate for 17, so whether it was tennis, or card games or scrabble in the evening, I couldn't join in. So it was usually a book for me.

 

Luckily we moved a lot, and in any new town the first place I sought out was the local library, and then when I started school it was the school library. In one school, another bookworm friend and I became a bit competitive — we were reading a decent sized book a night. The school librarian didn't believe we could read that fast and he'd grill us about each book before he'd let us borrow another one. 

 

Now I live in a house filled with books, my childhood friends and my adult companions. Some evoke special times or events, and with some I recall exactly where I was when I first read them. I wonder sometimes what kind of person I'd be if I'd been raised in a home with no books. Would I be a writer, or not? I really don't know.

 

Pat comes in with:

As I suspect most of the wenches and the majority of writers will say—I was an eclectic and voracious reader. One of my earliest memories is of lying on the floor with a book my librarian great-aunt had sent me for Christmas. I knew my alphabet but couldn’t read, and I had no one to read me the story promised by all the exotic pictures of foreign countries. So I lay there day after day, puzzling out the words on my own.

I begged for the Little Golden Books in the grocery store and to this day can probably quote from Poky Little Puppy and The Little Engine That Could. We had no library or bookstore, so I would read the stories over and over, making up my own to go with the pictures. 

Once I was able to access the school library, I knew no bounds. I’d pretty much read everything in the elementary school library by the time I was in sixth grade, including all the sports books meant for boys. I was reading Austen and Bronte because I could buy them through the Scholastic book club. I read Wheaties boxes at breakfast.

Those days are long gone, and I’m much too particular now. I can’t decide if that’s regrettable or not. I mean, Wheaties boxes? Let’s have a little discrimination!

 

 

 

 

Nicola:

 

Like so many other bookish children I was a reader who read anything and everything. It was an amazing voyage of discovery finding out about people and places I had never imagined, past, present and fantastical. I look back on those days with nostalgia and some envy because I don’t think it’s possible to capture quite the same rush of excitement and drive for reading that I had then. I read about children who went to boarding school, who had ballet lessons, who kept horses, who lived in the middle ages or in different countries. I particularly loved stories about big families with siblings because I didn’t have any.

 

My favourites were The Brydons (especially the Brydons on the Broads because there was a ghostly Viking ship involved) and the Fell Farm Campers because I lived in a city and the countryside seemed a strange and exotic place. I loved science fiction, I scared myself with ghost stories, and I cried over The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. Happy Days!

 

Crystal Magic and Sapphire Nights

Pat here:

For years, readers asked me to write about the descendants of my Malcolms and Ives. But I have a bit of a problem writing about the children of my characters because I have a feeling they would be very interfering parents, and romance needs to be about the couple, not their overbearing, all-powerful families.

So I introduced the Unexpected Magic series and the great-grandchildren of the original Malcolms and Ives. Almost a hundred years after that first generation, I have a dozen fascinating families I can create, if I like, but I’m incapable of writing about the same concepts and setting into eternity. I needed to explore new shores and different conflicts. I’ll probably come back with more stories for the grandchildren at some point, but it might not be in England. My Muse likes to travel!

Valentine Tidbits

Andrea/Cara here, musing about traditions and how they evolve. This is, of course, the month of Love, with hearts, flowers, and chocolate—not to speak of a dizzying array of bling—filling the stores and airwaves in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. Now, I’ll confess right away that I’m rather curmudgeonly about this holiday. It’s always struck me as crassly commercial . . . I like to think Love doesn’t need to be scripted and that gifts should be personal and heartfelt—quirkily offbeat rather than perfectly polished.

I know, I know, as a romance writer, I should be embracing it. And at heart I am, as anything that encourages the expression of love and friendship is a Good Thing. However, the history nerd in me couldn’t help but be curious about the history behind the holiday. And in doing a little research, I discovered some interesting—at least they are to me—things. So allow me to share a few randomly-chosen Valentine’s Day tidbits.

There are three different Christian saints named Valentine. One legend says St. Valentine’s Day is named after an early priest, who defied the decree of Roman emperor Claudius II that forbade young men to marry. (He thought single men made better soldiers.) Valentine continued to perform marriages, for which he was put to death.

Another variation of the legend say that while Valentine was in prison, waiting for his execution, when he fell in love with the daughter of his jailer, and sent her love letters signed “from your Valentine.”

Others claim that the origin of Valentine’s Day lie in the Roman pagan fertility ritual of Lupercalia that took place every spring in February. Goats would be sacrificed, and young men would roam through the streets slapping young women with strips of the bloody hide—its touch was supposed to make them more fertile in the coming year.

During the Middle Ages, a common belief in England and France was that February 14th was the start of the mating season for birds—and thus the date became associated with the day of Love. Chaucer reinforced this idea in his writings—a quote from him reads: “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
/When every foul cometh ther to choose his mate."

The first Valentine poem is to have been written in 1415 by the Duc d’Orleans to his wife from the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned after his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (It still exists and is in the British Library’s manuscript collection.)

In the 1840s, Esther Howland created the first mass-produced Valentine cards, complete with lace and ribbons, in America. Today, it’s estimated that over a billion cards are sent worldwide. (And in case you were wondering, over 110 million roses are purchased for Valentine’s Day.)

In the early 1860s, Richard Cadbury, who took over his father’s chocolate and cocoa business with his brother, had the inspired idea to package their fancy chocolate “assortments” in fancy decorative boxes. He was the first to create a heart-shaped box!

Okay, now that I’ve revealed my sentiments and regaled you with some “bon-bons” from history, let’s hear your thoughts about Valentine’s Day. Do you like the holiday? Do you send cards? What gift do you most like to receive? (Aside from chocolate, which I’m assuming is a given. I mean . . .who wouldn’t want chocolate. Even a curmudgeon like me!)

A Fairytale Queen

Susan here, lately doing some research for a project that’s been simmering for a while. Some of it crisscrosses the research I did for Queen Hereafter: A Novel of Margaret of Scotland (btw, on sale in e-book this week for $1.99!). A great deal is known about her, almost more than any other medieval queen of her era—which, for writing fiction, is both good and a challenge, with so many historical facts to be spun into fiction. Princess, refugee, queen, mother, and later saint—she was one of the rare medieval royals with a biography written by her personal confessor, Bishop Turgot, an Englishman who clearly admired and understood her, and loved her as a friend—and he left a gold mine of information and inspiration for a writer. Turgot idealized his beloved friend as well, recording not only detailed information, but creating some of her most enduring mythology as well.

Her myth is mingled indelibly with facts, with some confirmed by other sources, some simply impossible to dissect, and much of it just so easy to believe. Margaret was kind, beautiful, generous, intelligent, a young Saxon queen raised in Hungary and shipwrecked in Scotland; she had the education and confidence to face up to priests and bishops and argue theology with them; she birthed eight healthy children and loved them dearly; she prayed fiercely and was so devoted to her religious beliefs that she near starved herself, believing she was greatly flawed ... she welcomed the poor into her castle and fed their children porridge with her own spoon ... she married against her will a big, brawny, uncivilized brute king, taught him to read, and came to love him more than her own life. The stories go on and on, and Margaret emerges as complex, strong, brilliant, sensitive, an unforgettable and extraordinary young queen.  

“There is perhaps no more beautiful character recorded in history.”  
 --W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland, 1895, on Queen Margaret

She is as much a factual historical queen as a fairytale queen, so perfect and yet intriguingly flawed and vulnerable; from our perspective, in hindsight, she is an extraordinary medieval woman in many ways. To write a solid and balanced novel about her, blending facts and apocryphal stories, I had to piece together facts and unravel some of the idealism to find the person within, portray her as a real young woman, to produce the most interesting, convincingly accurate, and entertaining story I could.  

But sometimes the romantic, idealized version is lovely, especially when the story is solidly founded in historical fact. Aside from its political, social, and historical significance, the story and the life of Queen Margaret, who married Scotland’s King Malcolm Canmore in 1069, is undoubtedly a tale of genuine love that grew from a necessary alliance, proving that not all royal medieval marriages were simply convenient.   

Last of the Brides!

by Mary Jo

I've loved introducing new readers to my classic Bride trilogy, which had been languishing in obscurity for years. Now the last book, The Bartered Bride, is due to be released as an ebook tomorrow (February 8th).

All three books are marriage of convenience of one sort or another, and The Bartered Bride is no exception. The review from Publishers Weekly said, "(Gavin and Alex's) journey from strangers to spouses to true lovers is utterly authentic." And a long and challenging journey it is!

The story was partially inspired by requests I had for a story about Amy Melbourne, the intrepid young daughter of Catherine Melbourne, heroine of my Fallen Angels book, Shattered Rainbows. Catherine had married a cavalry officer and "followed the drum" through the Peninsular campaigns, caring for her husband, nursing the wounded, and raising her fearless young daughter. Amy played an important role in her mother's story, and readers wanted to see more of her.

So did I, but I had to wait till she grew up, which is why the Bride trilogy is set a little post-Regency. More than that, I knew that if Amy got into trouble anywhere in Britain, her warrior stepfather, Lord Michael Kenyon, would swoop in to save her from harm because that's the kind of man he was. But that would interfere with Amy's own romance. <G>

It took me time to work out her story. Not only did I decide I'd have to send her halfway around the world, but she informed me that "Amy" was too much a little girl's name and she much preferred to be called by her middle name, Alexandra. (Teenagers!) So she became Alex, and after being widowed in Australia, she heads for home with a young daughter of her own. Here's the blurb for the story:

After building a fortune in the exotic East, American adventurer and merchant prince Gavin Elliott sets his sails for London to begin a new life. Then fate intervenes on an infamous island in the East Indies where he discovers an Englishwoman facing degradation and peril. Though saving her may cost Gavin his life, he cannot refuse to help the fierce beauty who touches his heart and soul with her unconquerable spirit.

Alexandra Warren is returning home from Australia as a widow and mother when a pirate attack condemns her to a life of servitude. A miracle arrives in the form of a steely-eyed Yankee captain whose reckless courage wins them freedom and a safe passage home to London. Intimate strangers joined by too many secrets, they slowly begin to heal the past with attraction and tenderness--until an old enemy reaches out to threaten the passionate love Gavin has found with his irresistible bartered bride.

Alex and Gavin's story has lots of adventure, powerful romance, and of course a happy ending, though there were some serious black moments! There's also the opportunity to see Catherine and Michael and other Fallen Angels characters. Here's an excerpt:

Alex had finally dozed off in a corner of the cage, but she jerked upright at the sound of footsteps. Slavery had taught her that changes were seldom for the better, and she’d been frightened ever since guards brought her to the palace to confine her in this triple locked cage in a strange, luxurious chamber.

At first, the dim light of the single lamp showed only the arrival of a tall, intimidating male. Then she recognized the European who’d visited the slave market. She’d begun to wonder if he was a hallucination, but he was real enough—a tall, powerful man with an air of command. Those gray eyes and the fair hair sun-bleached to gold had to be European. Involuntarily she rose and crossed the cage, pressing against the bars as she studied him hungrily. The gaudy uniform wasn’t British—perhaps German or Scandinavian.

She clamped down on her longing by reminding herself that being European didn’t mean he’d help her. Though she had instinctively pleaded for his aid at the market, now that they were face to face she reminded herself that Westerners who frequented the far corners of the world were often adventurers and renegades. Perhaps this one had asked the sultan for the use of the European slave woman.

No matter. Even if his motives were vile, he was her best chance for freedom, and she’d do whatever necessary to ingratiate herself so he’d help her.

The man halted with shock when he saw her. Glad that he probably wasn’t responsible for her presence, she asked, “Do you speak English? Parlez vous Francais?”

“Both,” he replied in English. “How did you come to be in my rooms?”

“I have no idea.” Unable to repress her bitterness, she added, “Slaves aren’t usually told why things happen to them.”

His expression tightened. “I’m sorry—that was a foolish question.”

Though she’d repaired her battered cotton shirt as best she could, she was uncomfortably aware of how her breasts strained against the thin, worn fabric. She was larger than most Island women, and there had been no kebaya her size.

When his gaze reached her breasts, he looked away in embarrassment. She found that reassuring—a man with a sense of the decencies might be more likely to help her.

He stepped into the bedroom and returned with a neatly folded shirt. “Would you like this?”

“Oh, please!” He passed his shirt through the bars and she immediately pulled it over her head. The garment fell almost to her knees. Before rolling up the sleeves, she rubbed her face in the crisp white fabric. “This smells so good. So clean.”

He glanced around the cage, which contained nothing but her and a brass chamber pot. “Do you need anything else? Food or drink?”

She moistened her lips. Not having eaten or drunk since early that morning, she’d spent her first hour in the cage staring longingly across the room at a bowl of fruit on a low table. “Water, please. And then…could I have some fruit?”

“Of course.” He set the fruit bowl on the floor so she could reach through the bars to help herself.

While she peeled and ate a juicy local orange called a jeruk manis, the man collected pillows from a bench and pushed them through the bars. Gratefully she sank onto one. The last months had made her appreciate even the smallest of comforts.

“No water, only rice wine, I’m afraid.” He settled on another pillow outside the cage, holding a bottle and two glasses. “Drink with caution. This has quite a kick.”

“Thank you.” The rice wine went rather well with the banana that she chose, and she welcomed the spreading warmth that unknotted tight muscles. She closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in the company of her own kind. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten proper behavior. My name is Alexandra Warren, and I’m English.”

“I’m Gavin Elliott out of Boston, and master of a merchant ship.” He noted her gaze. “Ignore the uniform—it was designed only to dazzle.”

An American? Not quite as good as a fellow Briton, but close enough.

Actually, though Gavin considers himself American, he was born in Scotland, a fact which causes him trouble in this story.  Here are several reviewer quotes:

"a story you can't put down"—TheBestReviews.com

"a hero to-die-for" —Suzanne Coleburn

"a finely crafted tale by a mistress of the genre"—Romantic Times, Kathe Robin

Click here to buy The Bartered Bride.

Books 1 and 2 of the trilogy, The Wild Child and The China Bride, are also available as e-books. These are some of my most sweeping, adventurous stories, and if you read them, I hope you enjoy the characters and their adventures as much as I enjoyed writing them.

I'll be giving away a free copy of The Bartered Bride to one commentor between now and midnight Thursday. Have you read Gavin and Alex's story? Do you want to?

Mary Jo, ending with her tagline for the Bride Trilogy:

Three extraordinary women,
    Three powerful men,
         Three passionate, unlikely marriages.

 

 

The Curious Case of the Beautiful Heroine

Susanna here, on a deadline again, so I'm cheating a little, recycling a post that I wrote at the now-resting group blog The Heroine Addicts four years ago (almost to the day). And I have to admit, I'm still curious to know what everybody thinks...

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I don’t know when I stopped describing heroines. Somewhere along the way between my first book and the middle ones I realized readers usually formed images themselves without my having to describe first-person narrators in detail. I might say what the colour of their hair was, or their age if it was relevant, but anything beyond that was more likely just a passing comment touching on some feature in comparison to someone else.

Celia, the heroine of Season of Storms, looking at her famous actress mother, admits: “She was lovely. I had always thought so, always wished my own eyes could have been as large, my features half as delicate. Instead I’d inherited only her small hands and her allergy to cats.”

Puppy with a Purpose!

Nicola here. Today I’m taking a break from talking about books or writing or history to blog about one of my other interests; training guide dog puppies! This is prompted by the fact that we have a new puppy in training who joined the household 3 weeks ago. Her name is Lucy and she is Labrador/Golden Retriever cross and she is currently 10 weeks old!

Lucy is the sixth guide dog puppy who has come to us for puppy walking. Over the years we have built up some knowledge and experience of the job but each puppy is different and we learn so much each time. Puppy walking is a nice thing to do as an antidote to the more isolated aspects of a writer’s life. It gets me out and about, meeting people and engaging with them, talking about a cause I believe in and working with dogs – which I love!

The puppies usually come to us when they are about 7 weeks old. Lucy settled in very quickly, starting her house training, sleeping
through the night and quickly becoming attached to Angus, our pet dog who is a great mentor. Whilst she is so young her training is all about getting her to learn a few basic commands: Sit, lie down, stay and come, all of which she can now do with aplomb! Angus has been very useful in showing her how – at the price of a few biscuits for his time! The other thing we do is take her out to start experiencing the busy world outside, carrying her into shops and down the street so she can get used to people and vehicles. Unfortunately she is starting to get very heavy so it will be great when she has had all her injections and it’s safe for her to start moving under her own steam! All of her training is closely supervised by our Guide Dogs Puppy Walking Supervisor who gives us loads of support as well as checking up on the welfare and progress of the dog, and Lucy also goes to guide dog puppy class so she can meet other puppies, learn, and be sociable!

When Lucy is a bit bigger she will start to go to all sorts of exciting places like her predecessor Ethel did. She gets to travel on buses and trains, visit cafes and restaurants (hopefully without trying to help herself to any food) and go to talks, concerts, village fetes, the theatre and just about anywhere we go. All these experiences are great fun as we watch each puppy learn about new things. Our first dog, Ufton, used to sing along at concerts. Rochester was so surprised by the applause at the theatre that he barked and Ethel had a particular liking for book shops. Naturally all of them have enjoyed visiting a wide variety of the stately homes of England, Rochester's trip to Highclere, the home of Downton Abbey, being the highlight.

This is all in preparation for the puppies' lives as a fully grown guide dogs when they accompany their owners in all aspects of their life. Another very important part of Lucy's life is, of course, relaxing and having fun, so there is lots of play built into her schedule and when she is old enough she will go “free running” like other dogs. Angus is looking forward to showing her his favourite places!

Lucy spends the first fourteen months or so with us before going on to her second stage of training at guide dog school. This is where she learns all the really clever stuff like how to guide a blind or partially sighted owner across the road. When she completes her training we are invited to go to her “graduation”, the point at which she passes her training and is matched with a new owner. It has been an absolute pleasure attending the graduation ceremonies of all our previous puppies. We are so proud of them, of all they have learned and what they go on to achieve.

So there is a little introduction to Lucy and her world. If you are interested in finding out more about her adventures as she grows and trains, she has her own Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/puppywithpurpose/ and she would love to chat with you there!

Do you have a particular cause that you support or charity that is important or special to you?