Imagine ninety years

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

As from yesterday September 14th, 90 is as long as Peter’s been on this earth. A weekend full of celebrations with family and friends …

Today I feel I’ve been here even longer, although I’m only 87. I would put in a photo at this point in the post, if I could but remember how to do it. Instead, I’ll manage a brief post:

“Devoted to Devon” is selling well. In fact, there’ll only be a few copies left for its official launch on September 27th in Hemyock. But there’ll be many of Peter’s oil paintings that illustrate the book available for sale, 2 – 4 pm at the Blackdown Healthy Living & Activity Centre, Devon EX15 3SH.

Wandering and Wondering in Wales

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Beautifully printed in India, our latest book has made it around the Cape of Good Hope in a queue of container ships avoiding the Houthi rebels in the Suez canal. See if you can find it in your nearest bookshop. It should be there. A friend has been waiting for her order of two chairs from some eastern country. I wonder if her chairs have been delivered. Chairs, books and who knows what else has been on the scenic route for weeks.

Wandering and Wondering in Wales

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Our next book together is going into production with Halsgrove publishers, to come out in early summer.

All Too Human

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Frailities and foibles, and the virtues hidden within the failings

It’s my contention that, however exaggerated a negative characteristic, there is a flipside that contains a virtue The nosy parker is the one who leaves the milk on the doorstep when you have covid.  The chatterbox is the one who alerts you to the broken paving stone.  In the 14 novels I’ve written, I have brought to the page about 64 characters, taking six people per novel as average.  Where do they come from?  I think there are bits and pieces of me and everyone I’ve ever met in my characters.  I hope they are credible.  I’m running a competition to find out.

Competition

I would love to hear from you if you have found anyone in any of my novels who has similar characteristics to yourself or to someone you have met. Give me a brief description of that real life person as well as the page number and title of the novel in which you found the broadly similar, fictional character.  I may post your entry on my Facebook, Linked In or Twitter page. The person whose entry pleases me the most will receive a signed copy of So Far, So Good, the memoir on sixty years of marriage with Peter Barrett.

Send your entry by email to Susie.barrett@btopenworld.com.  Closing date 31st January 2024.

Snakes alive! I’m 85.

/ Susan Barrett

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2022 new books

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So Far, So Good – sixty years together in words and pictures

a memoir with Peter Barrett

Flood and Flame – a novella about life and love

Praise from Tony Anderson

I thought the form perfect, the content beautifully done and the writing itself terrific. I completely fell for your characters, all in their different ways, and your account of  lives over many decades rang so true and resounded hugely.

I have to say that the end had me gulping – it was terribly moving.

And if you really aren’t going to write another novel, I’m sure there’ll be more poetry, both on the page and off.

Praise is sometimes hard to hear

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I don’t quite understand why I skim over compliments, barely registering them. What a waste! I’ve just re-found an email of praise from a writer friend whose opinion I value highly. Did I take it in on first reading? Not well enough, is the answer. I read it again this morning and glowed with pleasure; so much so that I will copy and paste it here.

Dear Susie,

I finished Flood & Flame a couple of days back and Lu has now done so, too, & I’m sure she’ll write to you.

I just wanted to say how much I had enjoyed it.

I thought the form perfect, the content beautifully done and the writing itself terrific. I completely fell for your characters, all in their different ways, and your account of  lives over many decades rang so true and resounded hugely.

I have to say that the end had me gulping – it was terribly moving.

And if you really aren’t going to write another novel, I’m sure there’ll be more poetry, both on the page and off.

All love to you both and many felicitations for having created & produced something really special,

Tony

New project

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We’ve begun working on something new. Its working title is:-

Wandering and Wondering in Wales

an exploration

by Peter and Susan Barrett

INTRODUCTION

From a high point near our home on the borders of Devon and Somerset in the southwest of England, we can see Wales. Today, in the mid-winter sunshine, a shining band of white is visible on the far side of the greyish blue Bristol Channel. We wonder what town it is, so far away yet seeming so close. We plan to find out.

During our sixty-three years of our marriage, we’ve worked independently as artist and writer. We’ve also produced books together, the results of the notes and sketches we’ve made while spending time in various parts of the world, mainly America, Greece and New Zealand. It’s time to turn our attention to the country on our doorstep. Over the next six months we will explore the landscapes and seascapes, mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes, waterfalls and canals, railways and mines, and the many castles and curiosities of Wales.

The result will not be a guide book but a personal description of what we find, to be shared with people like us, who no longer wander far from a car park yet still wonder at the wonders to be found.

A Matter of Life and Death

/ Susan Barrett / 2 Comments

When Eye can no longer write and read

the things I loved to read and see,

I can bewail my age, and rage –

Or simply accept the next new page.

I cannot know the final hour

When Death will take the fading flower.

I cannot know the witching time

Death will stop my simple rhyme.

But I can choose to live and say

I’m glad I’m alive each darkening day.

I will not wail and wildly rage,

I’m ready to read Death’s bright new page.

Susan Barrett, August 20th 2022

Harriet Now and Then

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https://tinyurl.com/HNandT

Susan’s thirteenth novel is about two women who share the name Harriet.  Alternate chapters tell their individual stories.  The first Harriet lived in the west country in the second half of the eighteenth century; the other is alive today. The first Harriet wrote poetry and married a man who had a good reputation as a poet. The second Harriet is a cellist and, through meeting an American professor of literature, becomes involved in research into the life of the first Harriet. The circumstances of the two women’s lives may be different but the challenges they face as women artists are similar. The 18th century Harriet does as well as she can, within the confines of a woman’s life at the time. Today’s Harriet was widowed young and left with an emotionally disordered son. She might have become a talented composer and concert cellist but has to gain a steady income while giving her son, now adult, a home and care. Both Harriet meet men who may make a difference to their lives but fail to do so, for different reasons.

Now available on Amazon in paperback and as an ebook. Follow the link at the start of this blog.