Tainted Tree goes to Trowbridge and Dorking

Another busy week, which included fireworks and a giant bonfire on Saturday night – the day after my birthday -a meeting on Monday, shopping for birthday presents in Guildford on and also Guildford Writers on Tuesday, lunch with Irene and the reading circle, on Thursday and a trip to Cambridge through stormy weather on Saturday, returning today.

On Sunday, we added half our hedge to the embers of the bonfire which resulted in another blaze. Spending most of the morning walking backwards and forwards with the clippings was exhausting though, and took me two days to recover.

I didn’t have anything to read out at GW, but I had written another few hundred words of the current novel. As far as reading is concerned, I had completed the assigned book, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton and found it a very good read. It was a large ambitious novel, in terms of keeping all the information in place, and is a most readable book - a definite page-turner.

I was particularly interested in, because, in some ways, it resembles Tainted Tree, which you could regard as a 'time-slip' novel and it also fits very neatly into this category. The author visits three main time periods – 2005, 1975 and 1905-1913, so like Tainted Tree, this is a mainly twentieth century novel. Unlike TT, however, Kate Morton spends much more time in the early part of the century, whereas my main story was in contemporary times, with diary entries and letters showing the past.

In the present, there is an Australian woman, Cassandra, who like my own modern day character, comes to England from another land to find out secrets from the past. At times it could be confusing, as it was not always possible to remember what the character knew about the research, for the reader is discovering things from the earlier stories, which are probably unknown to the later characters.

I feel it is important for the author to take the reader seamlessly from one period to another, as I tried to do in Tainted Tree, and for the most part, Kate Morton succeeds in this. Despite various nit-picking, it was a thoroughly enjoyable book, and I shall miss it.

In the mean time, possibly as a result of a piece about TT in the Somerset Times, Trowbridge Waterstone’s has ordered in copies, which is good, especially as I have an article coming out in December in Family Tree Magazine which also ought to bring about some interest.

Next week, Irene and I will be at Dorking Waterstone’s during the middle of the day, signing copies of our books, so if you’re in the area, drop in and see us.