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Family feelings

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Who can pin down in words the feeling of genetic recognition you can get when seeing a blood relation? I felt this reassuring familiarity today while watching a video of my first cousin. Richard Easton. It was part of his obituary in the New York Times. By the way he expressed himself, the expression on his face, the twinkle in his eyes, the play of his mouth – yes, I thought and certainly felt, this is “us” rather than “them”.
Dickie was my only first cousin. My mother lost one of her two brothers to typhoid while he was a young naval officer stationed in Malta. Her other brother never had children. My father’s sister married a Canadian at the end of the First World War and went to live in Montreal. Later his mother, a widow., crossed the Atlantic to visit them – and never returned, due to the outbreak of the Second World War. She died aged 98 in the 1950s. Dickie’s two elder brothers had joined the Canadian Air Force at the start of the war and were both shot down and killed.
These losses are part of the growing total of losses in my life and add to my present realisation that we never know the full story of anyone until after their death. The regret of not knowing, seeing or appreciating a relation or a good friend as well as we might is part of grief. It makes us want to do better with present friends and relations. But being human, we may never follow through with our best intentions.
I should add to this that my sister and I, in our 80s, have no other relations left of our generation, and we hardly ever saw Dickie, the Atlantic, different careers and lives getting in the way. But when we did meet, it was a joy. I do know that not all families like all members of their families. We were lucky.
One more thought this morning. I’m glad I captured in print some wonderfully descriptive letters written by Dickie’s elder brothers.   Alive in World War Two is the title of a collection of letters exchanged during the Second World War by family members, available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alive-World-War-Two-commentary-ebook/dp/B01M5CY3ND/

Also available is the light-hearted, cartoon-illustrated spoof I’ve produced: The SB Guide to Nature,  a Kindle ebook as from yesterday and soon to be a wafer-thin paperback. Cousin Dickie would have been amused by it, I’m sure. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082P9CB7Z/

from the intrepid explorer’s sketch book

Updating another kind of book

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The SB Guide to Nature is the story behind some greetings cards I produced a couple of years ago.  It’s the (spoof) notebook and sketches of an intrepid explorer of the wilder regions of the world …

You can see the wafer-thin book on the link below to its bonusprint page.

https://www.bonusprint.co.uk/view-online-photo-book/421d68f4-fe10-474b-b82d-bf0597e71bc6

And the book is also on Kindle as an ebook.

EXHIBITION IN HEMYOCK

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Yellow boots at Lyme Regis

NEW PAINTINGS

BY PETER BARRETT

countryside and seaside scenes

THE GARAGES MILLHAYES HEMYOCK DEVON EX15 3SH

OPEN FRIDAY 29th NOV 3.30– 7.30 pm

oils and watercolours

NOV 30, DEC 1, 2 and 3 10 – 7 pm

Under the pier at Weston-super-Mare

Winter morning on the Cobb, Lyme Regis

Peter Barrett has made a long career as artist and illustrator. From the 1960s when his abstract expressionist paintings were exhibited at the Drian Galleries, London, through the many years when he received commissions from publishers for wildlife illustration, up to and including today when several original illustrations of his are on sale in a New York gallery, Peter’s work has been commissioned, exhibited and collected in Europe, UK and USA. In recent years he has been painting his own subjects in his studio near Hemyock, and has shown his work locally. This is his fourth exhibition at The Garages, Millhayes, a large, light space which started life as part of the St.Ivel factory, housing the company’s milk lorries. Peter keeps his prices low for his local exhibitions, and is free to paint what he wants. The result is a constant and delightful flow of work from the studio of this prolific, versatile and talented artist.

Okay – so I am biased.

Tasters

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The magazine Booklaunch has spurred me on to record us reading, in turn, an extract from our memoir, The Garden of The Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s. I’ve also recorded an extract from my recent novel, Greek Gold. Fun to do with Mark of Styles Recording Studio, Exeter. See what you think.

The Garden Of The Grandfather recorded extractDownload
Greek Gold recorded extractDownload

Dilemma

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I’ve succumbed to the temptation of producing an ebook edition of The Garden of The Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s. Over a period of two years, we spent a very long time taking extreme care to produce in print a memoir we could be proud of. The very well printed paperback sells for £15, direct from my website. However, knowing how easy and quick it is nowadays to produce ebooks for Amazon, I decided to see if Kindle Direct Publishing software could deal with a highly illustrated book (over 200 black and white photographs and line drawings!). I knew how well black and white photographs appear on a Kindle, so I was tempted to try. The advantage of an ebook edition is that it makes the acquisition of a book cheap, quick and easy.  I have spent the last week playing around with the process.  Result: The Garden of The Grandfather is now available on Kindle, but the way it appears on the screen is by no means perfect. The format of the print version, so carefully designed by Peter, is of course lost. Perhaps if I created a new version on a pdf especially for an ebook edition, I would manage to get over the problems. But I can’t face the fiddle of it. I tell myself that the Kindle version of the book is good enough in quality while achieving the aim of making what we reckon is a valuable archive of black and white photographs, sketches and descriptive text, readily available at a low price.
All the same, I am doubtful about letting something imperfect go out under our name. Hence, the dilemma.
If anyone reading this would be kind enough to download a free sample of the book, please do so and let us know your opinion. Should we withdraw the edition, or not? I wonder if anyone will respond to this request…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Grandfather-Life-Greece-1960s-ebook/dp/B07QBQJTN6/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=The+Garden+of+The+Grandfather%2C+

New novel “Greek Gold”

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Available now on Amazon as a paperback and as a Kindle ebook, a novel in two parts set in Greece in 1943 and the present day.

This is the cover for the ebook.  There’s another version of it on the paperback.  It shows a gold sovereign, which reflects a secondary strand of the novel.

Hoping this latest novel attracts readers interested in (modern)  Greece.

Reflections on reflections

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Do we see an accurate reflection of ourselves in a mirror? I think it’s a two-way process. If it is you yourself who is looking at the reflection, a lifetime’s doubts about what you look like get in the way of how you see yourself. So a mirror’s reflection of ourselves cannot be how others see us.
It struck me today that it’s the same with writing. It is hard, if not impossible, to form a faithful picture of anything you’ve written yourself – well, at least I find it so. For that reason, I always want to hear readers’ views. It is not a matter of longing for praise. Somehow, praise can be dismissed, in the way that ‘how beautiful you are’ is seldom believed even by beauties. Any praise must be descriptive and valid to be heard. Easiest to believe and appreciate is reported enjoyment. I write to entertain a reader as well as to leave them with some thoughts about the underlying theme, which is usually about a quirk of human nature. If I didn’t need occasional validation, I would probably continue to write so long as I have fresh ideas, but the work would stay in a drawer.
As it is, I do need to hear what people think of my work. That’s why I’ve continued to publish, despite not having an agent or a publisher. It’s become easier and easier to self-publish. CreateSpace is now part of Kindle Direct Publishing who produce ebooks for Kindle but also paperbacks to sell on Amazon. After an initial, stupid mistake on my part which resulted in my latest novel, Greek Gold, coming out in proof form in far too large a size, I corrected this fast and just a day later, up came the novel in Amazon’s book pages, right size and right format.
A plea to anyone out there who reads this blog … please consider shelling out £5.50 plus postage to read this latest Susan Barrett novel and tell her, i.e. me, what you think. Compliments are welcome, of course, but make them credible. Severe criticism would be hard to bear, and maybe best kept to yourself! The crux of it is that I’d like to know if the novel works. It’s like a soft-boiled egg. Until it’s cracked open, you can’t be sure you’ve got it right. In the case of Greek Gold, I hope it’s not like the proverbial curate’s egg …

Greek Gold is available on Amazon co.uk as an ebook and in a paperback edition.  

 

Available on Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle

October’s sunsets

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I cannot resist rushing to get my camera when I see a sunset like this.   Not that this photo captures the true extent of it, nor its depth of colour.  Real-life experience cannot be beaten, even if you are a dab hand with photoshop  (which is certainly not me),

outside and then looking inside

Uploading photos is a good delaying tactic, a temporary escape from the prickly job of getting back into the novel I was writing before I began writing the text of The Garden of the Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s.  That’s well over a year ago now.  I find fiction writing  both harder and easier than writing fact.  Harder, because you have to conjure and shape fiction from nowhere but your own mind; easier, because your own mind is the irrefutable source.  Getting facts right worries me – though in Trumpbrexitage, maybe accuracy matters not a jot.

Sofika Eleftherodaki came to our book launch in Athens last week.  She’s the CEO of the famous Athens bookshop, now sadly closed.  Let’s hope it’s only gone into a chrysallis stage, to hatch out in the future in a new form.   Sofika understands the importance of pinning down memories with photographs, as butterflies used to be in the past.  Most photos these days are taken on smartphones, hundreds of them never being saved in print form.  Even so,  there are some marvellous photographs being taken and printed by gifted photographers with amazing technical ability.  But technology cannot yet reproduce real-life experience.   That has become more precious in this virtual reality age.  Will Self has written a thought-provoking essay in this month’s Harper’s magazine.  The Printed Word in Peril, Reading, Writing and the Tyranny of the Virtual.  More about that another time.

For information about The Garden of The Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s, go to this page The Garden of the Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s

BOOK LAUNCH NEWS

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Relief!  We are now the far side of our three slide show presentations to launch The Garden of the Grandfather.  The first was on home ground in Hemyock; the second, a little further afield in Somerset; the third was held in Athens on October 7th at the Katakouzenos House Museum in Amalias avenue.  That was very kindly opened by the British Ambassador and was very well attended.  Our week in Greece was spent, half in Papingo, and half in Athens, with very good Greek friends met and made over very many years. We’ve made new friends thanks to The Garden.  Among them is Sofika Eleftheroudaki who came to the launch in Athens.  The famous bookshop is now closed, but there will be some kind of future.   Writers, publishers and bookshops carry on, in one way of another.

Halfway through the slide presentation there were a couple of slides acting as links in the story.  One showed the re-creation of a cartoon I did to illustrate a Paul Jennings’ piece in the Observer about funny mis-translations.  The cartoon led me to a literary agent who sold my first novel to Michael Joseph and film rights to Anglo-Amalgamated.  The next slide showed photos of two paintings Peter did for the Sunday Times near the start of his career as a wildlife illustrator.  See below.

 Flying water in all rooms

     

prints of original watercolours ‘Butterflies’ and ‘Hedgerow’ by Peter Barrett

For more information and order form, click the link below

The Garden of the Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s

Do cobblers sell shoes?

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The Garden of The Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s is now available, ahead of the local launch in September.   Click on the book’s title on the menu, or this link

http://susanbarrettwriter.com/pencross-books

Some people are natrurally good at business, making sales, engaging in public relations and publicity.  Others are not so good.  Generally speaking, artists and writers loathe the business of selling their work.

At least, with the internet, I needn’t stand behind a stall shouting Book!  Book! Come and buy lovely book!