Czech Cover For Foxglove Summer

Fingerhut-Sommer - German Release August 21st 2015

Fingerhut-Sommer
Der fünfte Band: Schwarzer Humor trifft auf schwarze Magie

Obwohl sich Police Constable Peter Grant schon unwohl fühlt, wenn er Londons Skyline auch nur ein paar Kilometer weit hinter sich lässt, wird er jetzt in die tiefste Provinz geschickt: in einen kleinen Ort in Herefordshire - wo sich Fuchs, Hase und der Dorfpolizist Gute Nacht sagen. Aber es werden zwei Kinder vermisst, und ihr Verschwinden erfolgte womöglich unter magischen Umständen. Also muss Peter notgedrungen sein angestammtes Biotop verlassen. Mit der Flusstochter Beverley Brook begibt er sich mutig nach Westen, hinein ins ländliche England ...

The DTV page is here...

Foxglove Summer: The Soundtrack

These are some of the sounds that provided the soundtrack to writing Foxglove Summer.

Live in Leominster on Friday

Where?
Leominster Library
8 Buttercross
Leominster
HR6 8BN

Telephone: 01432 383290
Email: leominsterlibrary@herefordshire.gov.uk


When?
7.00 pm 17th July 2015

Who?
Me - occasional author.

Why?
Because a day spent outside Herefordshire is like a day without sunshine, a road without potholes and a meal without a detailed explanation of where all the food comes from.

What Else?
Hereford Libraries are having a book festival and I write books - do the maths!

Tommorrow Foxglove Summer is out in Paperback.

 Rejoice!

The British Paperback edition of Foxglove Summer is officially released tommorrow and I would like to thank all the people that buy my books, all the people who do all the behind scenes stuff that actually gets the book produced and distributed and last but not least the booksellers who flog them.

Since we've seen the cover of Foxglove Summer quite alot here is a picture of everyone's favourite ghost hunting dog.

Locations, Locations, Locations: Foxglove Summer

To celebrate this weeks UK release of Foxglove Summer in paperback here is a map to some of thelocations in the book.

I tried to embed it in the blog but that didn't work but I'm told that this link here might work.

Paperback Launch in Cardiff

Where?
Waterstones Cardiff in Wales!

When?
The 9th of July at Seven O'clock! In less than 2 weeks time.

Who?
Me... and that should be enough for you.

Why?
To mark the release of the paperback version of Foxglove Summer!

What Else
Waterstones Cardiff is here! In Cardiff... unsurprisingly.

And you can buy tickets for the event here!

Les Disparues De Rushpool

Even More More Useful Stuff

Even More More Useful Stuff

Traction Engine

Essentially steam locomotives that run without rails, that used to be used for heavy agricultural work and by showmen to both transport their rides from site to site and to power them when they got there.

A showman's road locomotive, as they were known, would be brightly painted and decorated with gilt and lights and emblazoned with the name of the family who operated it.

Many of these engines lived a long and eventful life being traded amongst families, modified, rebuilt and renamed all while travelling the length and breadth of the nation. Many drivers will swear that each engine has its own distinct pesonality - many drivers caught behind one on a narrow road merely swear.

Gastropub

Once there were just pubs and what kind of pubs they were was determined by a sort unspoken agreement between the landlord (or lady) and those that drank there. It could be a rough pub, a cosy local, an expatriate hang out or just the nearest place to your home where they sold booze and fags. Now all that has changed and pubs are now branded and breweries have marketting strategies(1).

A Gastropub is a pub that serves food of a much higher quality and price than a normal pub. This is particularly prevalent in Herefordshire where a village local might have a tapas night and a roadside inn a MIchellin star rating. This is a fine thing but sometimes you really just want a plate of chips.

(1) This is an exageration of course the breweries have always imposed their ideas on their tenants and no amount of branding is goung to save you if the local Millwall supporters decide that your place is where they want to congregate before a game.

Even More Useful Stuff

Even More Useful Stuff

Dogging

Some people like to have sex in the open air, some people like to watch other people having sex in the open air, fortunately some people like to have people watch them while they have sex in the open air. The term used to describe these activities in the UK is 'dogging' as in "I was out dogging last night."  There are websites and other forms of social networking to allow people to arrange hook ups but for many this lacks the exciting randomness of just turning up at a dogging location and seeing what happens.

Ford Asbo
Is Peter's nickname for his, currently second, Ford Focus ST - the term originates with Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's review of the Focus ST which can be found here.

Fry Up

Otherwise known as the traditional English Breakfast and the opposite of a Continental Breakfast(1). It usually involves a combination of three or more of the following - eggs (fried, scrambled or omelet), bacon, sausage, baked beans, black pudding(2), liver, bubble and squeak(3), onions, mushrooms, chips(4), toast or fried slice(5).

The full expression of this culinary cornucopia can usually be found in two locations, mid-level hotels or a traditional greasy spoon cafe. A proper English person upon moving into a new area will always seek to locate a suitable greasy spoon for those mornings when you just got to eat right no matter what your partner, dietitian or cardiologist says.

(1) Hotels would love to switch to offering just a continental breakfast because it's much easier to arrange a couple of croissants, some fruit and a selection of jams than the wonderful artery clogging panoply of the traditional breakfast,

(2) A blood sausage made from oatmeal and pork blood.

(3) Are you sure you want to know? Okay it's basically a dish designed to recycle leftover vegetables from a big roast beef dinner. So you get yesterday's potatoes, brussel sprouts, cabbages, peas and anything else you might have lying around - and then you fry them until they're a nice crispy brown on both sides. It was big during the dark days of rationing but now it's mostly made from fresh ingredients.

(4) French Fries.

(5) A Fried Slice of bread. Oh god now I'm hungry.

More Useful Stuff

More Useful Stuff


Herefordshire

Is an English County in the West Midlands. It is part of the borderland that once sheltered the rest of the English from the rapacious and warlike Welsh - or possibly it was the other way round? No matter it as rural a County as it's possible to get in England without running into a Northerner or a distressed celt.

Some statistics...
Population: 183,000 and change...
Population Density: 84 people per km2 (3rd lowest in England)
Ethnicity: 97.1% White, 1.2% Asian, 0.8% Mixed, 0.4% Black, 0.3% Other and 0.2% Fae(1)

Herefordshire is famous for potholes, top quality beef, cider, being the inspiration to Edward Elgar(2) and, in a spurious attempt to link the place back to Rivers of London/Midnight Riot, the birthplace of actor David Garrick.

(1) Or possibly Aliens...
(2) Amongst other things he wrote Pomp and Circumstances which is known the UK as Land of Hope And Glory and thus causes British people to burst out laughing at American High School graduations(3)
(3) Some British people anyway.

The Glorious Twelfth

The 12th of August when grouse come into season and thousands of people tramp around the countryside banging away with shotguns. Unlike foxhunting you're supposed to eat what you kill and it's supposed to be enormous fun - although not, presumably, for the grouse.

Vernacular
vəˈnakjʊlə/

noun: the vernacular

1. the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region. "he wrote in the vernacular to reach a larger audience"
synonyms: everyday language, spoken language, colloquial speech, native speech, conversational language, common parlance, non-standard language, jargon, -speak, cant, slang, idiom, argot, patois, dialect; regional language, local tongue, regionalism, localism, provincialism;
informallingo, local lingo, patter, geekspeak; rareidiolect
 "he wrote in the vernacular and adopted a non-academic style accessible to the public"

2. architecture concerned with domestic and functional rather than public or monumental buildings.
"buildings in which Gothic merged into farmhouse vernacular"

 3. what Ben Aaronovitch writes the Rivers of London books in...

Raymond Erith

Raymond Erith

Iconoclassicist

For better or for worse the dominant mode of architecture in the period following World War Two was 'modernism', buildings were square, roofs were flat and the comfort of the occupant a low priority compared to the expression of form and volume. If you want to know why this was the case then you can't do worse then read Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House although some have pointed out that modernism has since been superseded by post-modernism(1).

Herefordshire Folly 1961

Raymond Charles Erith RA FRIBA (that's Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects to you peasant) was having none of that. 

While his contemporaries excited themselves with the patterns wooden forms made in concrete and dreamed of vast depersonalised plazas, walkways and swathes of plate glass Erith drew on the classical tradition to build homes and public buildings that evoked the past without slavishly copying it.

There is about his work a joie de vivre so noticeably lacking from the work of his peers. I dare you to look upon his Herefordshire Folly, with it's copper awnings and it's rooftop viewing platform, without at least a hint of a grin.

That said he shared many of the foibles of his more 'modern' contemporaries, a strange disregard for kitchens for one and a love for spiral staircases that can only be kindled in the heart of someone who's never had to manhandle a wardrobe up one of the bloody things.

(1) Which is like modernism but with sloping walls and curvey bits added.

Useful Notes

Some Useful Stuff


British Floor Conventions
Are very simple - what the Americans call the First Floor is in fact the Ground Floor. The floor above that is the First Floor (which is the Second Floor in American). Above that floors are  numbered sequentially.

Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
An organisation founded in 1967 to provide practical help for immigrants to the UK and to campaign for reform of the UK's immigration  policy.

'Nick'
General slang for Police Stations, sometimes on it's own 'Let's get back to the Nick' or used to identify a specific station - 'Let's get back to Leominster Nick.'

UKIP (UK Independence Party)
A political party founded in 1993 to campaign for the immediate withdrawl of the UK from the European Union. Beyond their central policy concern they also favour carvorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner(1)

 (1) Well maybe not although you never know...

Foxglove Summer: 7 Days to US Release

Foxglove Summer

Now in travel size for your convenience!

Available in the US of A in 7 days!

When two young girls go missing in rural Herefordshire, police constable and wizard-in-training Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved.

It’s purely routine—Nightingale, Peter’s superior, thinks he’ll be done in less than a day. But Peter’s never been one to walk away from someone in trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police, who need all the help they can get. But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realize that dark secrets underlie the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain’s most junior wizard after all.

Soon Peter’s in a vicious race against time, in a world where the boundaries between reality and fairy have never been less clear….