The news report was a bulletin rather than Newsnight. Tony has been
working on his novel. He has also had his article: ‘Phenomenology (thank
goodness this is a blog and not a pod-cast!) in Mental Health Research,’
published in Mental Health Nursing. Rob has submitted his second novel to an
independent publisher and I had been heartened by some positive feedback about
my latest children’s picture book.
Rob was reading and had submitted the second chapter from his novel,
‘The Petrified Fountain.’ He was a little over the word count: 2, 800 rather
than 2, 000 words. ‘You don’t have to read all of it,’ his email had explained
but neither Tony nor I had been able to resist Rob’s pacy chapter opening. Tony
thought the piece well-crafted and extremely poignant. But Tony felt that the
main character needed to nag his mother more before she gave in to the idea of
the school trip. I’ll bet Tony, it’s not often that you ask for more nagging! A
couple of hyphen problems and the mysterious case of the vanishing sister were
also solved by Tony.
There was plenty in this piece that I identified with; it was a great
read and Rob had built the tension up carefully. Rob had mentioned a pink,
frilled light shade in his description which had made me think about the ones
trimmed with brocade and adorned with tuffety tassles. Following this
discussion Rob changed his description to include a coloured glass shade which
he felt captured the period more vividly. Tony and I had both been in agreement
that an outside courtyard was far too grand for a two-bedroomed terrace. I was
very pleased to be able to pick Rob up on a couple of continuity issues. The
protagonist had described himself as tidy then later replaced some items
haphazardly. Although his school reports had described that he ‘could do
better’ and ‘try harder’ he had managed to win the sixth-form essay prize.
Trying harder and the desire to do better are at the centre of what the Severn
Valley Authors are about.
