The last signing session this month
took place in Torbay (see above) and was, by all accounts, great fun. A pattern
sees to be evolving whereby a group of readers are all there together
at the beginning of the signing and a conversation builds up with
Marcia answering various questions. She loves this sort of
interaction with her readers – far better than just sitting there
signing books. Of course, it does rather depend on the size and shape
of the shop.
Two events this year did include a more
formal talk and question time: the one in the Liskeard library and
the evening spent in Saltash.
Anyway, with the signings out of the
way we are back to creating the best possible situation for Marcia to
‛listen to’ her characters or, if you prefer, for the ideas to
flow more freely.
With most of the books there has been a
particular place – or group of places – where she has been
acutely aware of her characters and it has been in those that they
have become fully rounded.
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| This robin was to appear in the book. He is perched on a gorse bush in the place where we would park and look across to the 'High House' and 'Summer House'. Shortly afterwards, all these gorse bushes were burnt down (probably by accident) but by then the book was finished. |
In the case of The Summer House
this was a place on the Toll Road out of Porlock from where you could
see the field in which Marcia set the High House with its Summer
House. In the case of Echoes of the Dance it was beside the
ford at Bowithick while the cliffs above Trevone did it for The
Christmas Angel. In these cases, the exact location of the book
was known but that is not always the case.
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| The ford at Bowithick |
We
have never really pinned down The Keep which is in the Chadwick
Trilogy and The Prodigal Wife. Yes, we know it is in a
triangle bordered by three roads but where in that triangle remains a
mystery. Oddly the same thing is true of house that Henrietta is
minding: somewhere near the villages of Crowcombe and Stogumber but
that is the closest we every got to it. Even so there were particular
places: a field running down to woodland where the cuckoo called not
far from Rattery for the trilogy and the area around Robin Uprights
Post on the Quantocks.
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| The cliffs near Trevone on Cornwall's north coast |
The same is true of the book Marcia is
working on at the moment. There is this hamlet and we now have a
pretty good idea of what properties there are there and we have
created a sketch map which will probably be changed a bit as time
goes on. Having said that, we have no real idea of where it is (other
than on the flanks of Dartmoor somewhere) but we do know where Marcia
is finding inspiration and we have been visiting there whenever we
have had the time and the weather has been reasonable. It is a shock
for us to be doing this at this time of the year. More usually it
would be from late April to the end of May and we would have our
coffee – from the hamper in the back of the car – while sitting
out on our faithful folding chairs.
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| The Two Bridges Hotel huddling in the valley on a very cold but clear day in March |
Not now. It is far too cold and so, and
for us very unusually, it is a question of finding places to go in
for the odd bit of refreshment. I suppose it is possible that some of
them might even appear in the book. So far we have been to the Two
Bridges Hotel, the community shop in Holne which also includes a
small café and the Dandelion (a sort of café bar associated with
the Moorland Hotel near Haytor).
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| Holne Moor is my favourite part of Dartmoor. |
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| The distinctive outline of Haytor |
Well that should narrow things down
bit.
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| On our return from The Dandelion the heavens opened for a moment and the rain came sizzling down. Then the shower stopped as abruptly as it had started and for a moment the setting sun peered through the clouds to outline the tors in the distance. |
