JULY 2022
Thank you to those of you who gave me your opinion on the title for my second book in The Uist Girl Series. It looks like His Bitter Seed is the favourite, but there’s still time to let me know if you have other suggestions, as I probably won’t be publishing it until September. I’ve been playing about with covers but someone on TikTok suggested Get Covers, so I’m going to try them this time. They are based in Ukraine. I’ve now sent my book to the editor, so there’s no turning back. I’ll be nervous when it gets near the date for her to return it to me.
Bearsden Writers, the writing group that I belong to, is organising a writing festival which will be held in Kilmardinny House in Bearsden on the 20th of August. The keynote speaker will be Sally Magnusson. I will be doing a presentation on self-publishing at the festival, so have been busy working on that since I came back from our last trip to Melrose and Berwick. You can get tickets on Eventbrite if you fancy going along.
I got a lovely surprise in the post the other day. It was a certificate from The Scottish Association of Writers for winning second place in their competition for a self-published novel in 2020. I should have received it at their Conference in that year but because of Covid, it was cancelled. They must be catching up with their backlog now. It was for my very first novel One Year and I remember how much encouragement it gave me to keep writing back then. So, thank you, Scottish Association of Writers, for bringing that warm feeling back.
We had a great trip to Melrose and Berwick. Melrose is one of my favourite places, and this time, we got into Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott. Last time we were there it was closed because of Covid. What a beautiful place it was, and the tour was made even better as an actor was narrating the audio guide and it felt like Sir Walter himself was showing us his home. We then moved onto Berwick where we planned to walk along the coastal path, but it was in such a poor condition we didn’t make it the entire way. The path was rutted and overgrown, in some places with jaggy nettles and gorse bushes, and we couldn’t appreciate the beautiful scenery as we had to look where we were going in case we twisted an ankle. It was the heatwave when we were there, so it was probably just as well the path wasn’t user friendly. We walked around Berwick and went out to the lighthouse where we saw a shoal of dolphins and leaping salmon making their way to the Tweed. It was amazing.
We also had another trip to the cinema when we got home and saw another fantastic film Where the Crawdads Sing. I had read the book so was hoping I wouldn’t be disappointed with the film. I certainly wasn’t as it nailed the essence of the book so well.
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MARION MACDONALD 