The Creation of 'A Young Man's Dreams'

Many years ago when living in Florida I became involved in Historic Preservation. I could tell you lots of tales about that..... but I won't.

Why would an Englishwoman interest herself in American Historic Preservation? I was already engrossed in the history of the town where I was living, having spent hours and hours in the reference library reading every book on the subject which they had. I then went on to learn the history of the Sunshine State. Very mixed, from people who cared about the ecology and welfare of it to the ones who were only in the development for profit. (Were? I can think of at least one person who lives there who still is.)

I decided that I wanted to write a book set in the early years of the 20th century about the development of a fictitious coastal town. And created Joseph Montgomery, a larger-than-life character who helped with the town's development. And, yes, he did line his pockets.

But he needed to be a sympathetic character. And he needed a background. Well, his back story just grew and grew and grew. And I found I had a saga beginning with his childhood in the circus. His family were Spanish acrobats but, ironically, young Jose was unco-ordinated. Fortunately an American school teacher found him and took him under her wing so that he learned to speak, read and write English.

A Young Man's Dream is the opening of this saga which takes us to the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914 which, although the US wasn't officially involved at that stage, it did affect many people living in the States.

If this book sells well I will continue on to Book 2 which takes the story through the WW1 and on into the Twenties. It is up to you, my dear readers.

A Young Man's Dreams is available on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback. It is also available on KOBO.

Why Some of us Self-Publish.

What a blessing Amazon is for those of us who seem to have spent most of our lives writing books but not getting published. Obviously at first our books weren't well written. And I confess that my first attempts were embarrassingly awful!

We gradually improved, went to classes or workshops, worked hard and learned our trade. But we still couldn't get published. Why not?

We had excuses and advice from agents and publishers and enough rejection slips to paper a room. The favourite excuse was 'not our type of thing'. A popular piece of advice is 'write about what you know'. So I did. A crime novel set in Spain with the main characters being a Spanish detective and an English hotel rep. Response? 'We don't publish courier books.' Oh what a laugh - it wasn't a courier book. Obviously no one had actually read the manuscript.

Still I kept trying as I know thousands of other writers have done and continue to do.

Now many of us are published - on Kindle (or on some other e-reader) and we sell our books. If your writing isn't any good you don't sell your books! The only way to find out is to go ahead and publish them. If they don't sell find a good editor to advise you where you are going wrong.

For me the best thing about self-publishing is that I don't have to try to mind read as to what agents/publishers think is going to be the next popular type of book. How would they know anyway?

Of course one thing that all self-published writers need is promotion. Which is where you, dear readers, come in. If you like a book then PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, give it a star rating (obviously we all want 5 stars) and recommend it to your friends. If you see a link to the book (or another in that series) on Twitter, Facebook etc. etc. please re-tweet - you know what I mean! We rely on you to spread the word.

In the meantime, thank you all very much for your support. 

Kindle Reviews

Hmmm. Have just heard a rumour that Amazon want us to have 12 reviews on each of our books so..... HELP!!!

If you have read my books could you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, give them a review. Just 5* and a brief comment will do - complimentary, of course!

News update on the 3rd Southdowns Mystery (Who are the JCs?) - still editing but hope to publish it around Christmas time.

Thank you for reading, reviewing and recommending my books. It is much appreciated.

amazon.com/author/barbarabothwell

When Cleo meets a horse - excerpt from Homicide in Hampshire

Cleo is a lady from London and recently moved to the New Forest.  Part of her health regime is taking walks in the forest - avoiding the ponies. She's never been close to a horse or pony and is rather scared of them!

"As I was nearing the copse I could see a saddled horse cropping the grass and wondered where the rider was.  “Oh gawd, don’t tell me someone’s fallen off and broken a leg or something,” I muttered.

I looked hard at the horse, it moved and I got the back view.  “’Ere, horse, turn round I want to get a look at your front.”  Keeping me distance I moved slowly round until I could see its face.  “I thought so.  You’re Maggie’s horse, aren’t you?”  I remembered seeing it in a photo Paula had shown me.  “Now what the heck’s your name?”  The reins were hanging down, “Come on, Cleo, be brave.  Be brave.”

I inched towards the horse.  It inched away.  I got a little closer and he moved away again.  “Oh for gawd’s sake, come ‘ere!  I want to take hold of those reins before you break your bloody leg.  Now, come ‘ere!”  Surprisingly the horse did “come ‘ere”.  I got hold of the reins.  “Now what do I do?  I’m not getting up on top of you even if I knew how.

“Come on, where is she?  You’re Maggie’s horse.  Where’s Maggie.  Come on, show me where she is.”  I was actually thinking of the horse as being like a dog.

I began walking into the copse, the horse quite close behind and getting uncomfortably close.  I could almost feel it nudging me and I broke out in a cold sweat.  “Don’t get too close, horse.  Don’t run away with me, either.  Hang on a minute.”  I stopped and it stopped.  We both listened.

I could faintly hear the sound of sobbing.  The horse whickered (I think that’s what that noise is called) and flicked his ears.  “That’s her, innit?  Come on, horse, here we go.  You lead her to me.”  I stood to one side of the footpath and let it go forward and take the lead.

Margaret was sitting on the ground nursing a foot, her helmet on the ground beside her and her fair hair like a waterfall over her face. 

“So why didn’t you use your mobile and phone your mother?”

She shoved her hair back as she looked up and whispered, “Battery’s flat.”

“How clever can you be!  So you’ve fallen off your horse.  Please don’t tell me you’ve broken your ankle.”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know,” she sobbed.

HOMICIDE IN HAMPSHIRE is available on:

Amazon Kindle

W.H. Smith's Kobo

Apple I-Pad

Barnes & Noble Nook

Sony

And other e-readers via Smashwords.com