As the days grow cooler here in the southern hemisphere, whales are returning to the waters around Cape Town. During the summer months it’s rare to see a whale in these parts, but come autumn their blows are a regular sight off the coast.
I was fascinated to see an unusually shaped whale blow a few days ago. Instead of the normal single jet of what looks like steam erupting from the water, there was a twin, v-shaped jet.
Thanks to the power of google, I’ve learned that this is the blow of a Southern Right whale. Southern Rights average 15m (50 feet) in length and weigh a bathroom-scale-denting 60 tons.
As I stood watching, I saw more and more twin blows in the same area, sometimes more than one at a time, which meant there must have been a whole load of them. They were too far away for me to see their backs when they surfaced, but I felt privileged to have witnessed their blows all the same.
Chronicles of Wydoria progress
While working on the next Chronicles of Wydoria book, Daphne Mayne and the Hounds of Magic, I took some time out to paint a scene where Daphne stands before the Castle of the Consistorium.
I find it helps me focus better on a story when I’ve created some artwork to do with the story or the series. I don’t always put the pictures I create on my website because they are often just quick sketches, but I went the whole hog on this one and created a finished piece.
I use Affinity Photo for my book covers and other artwork (it’s a fraction of the price of Photoshop and it’s a one-off payment rather than Photoshop’s monthly subscription model). There are tons of tutorials and other resources on the web for Affinity Photo too. You can even follow a Photoshop tutorial and, with very little effort, work out how to complete the steps in Affinity Photo.
I’m not affiliated to Serif (the creators of Affinity Photo) in any way and don’t receive anything for promoting them, it’s just that I like the product very much.
Soon I’ll have to get around to adding a dedicated section for Daphne’s world on this site!
I live in Cape Town and we have lovely sandy beaches, many fringed with dark, rugged rocks and, to top it all, the dramatic backdrop of Table Mountain.
To give you an idea of Table Mountain’s beauty, here’s a photo I took of it from the Waterfront, a shopping area located in Cape Town’s harbour area. On most sunny days the mountaintop is clear, but occasionally the conditions are right to produce the striking tablecloth on the summit.
The photo below is of a bay close to where we live. You can see the beaches of Clifton at the top left, and you’re probably thinking it has a nice warm Mediterranean appearance.
I have to say, on a hot summer’s day the sea looks inviting with the Atlantic waves rolling in and crashing onto the beaches, whales breaching a few hundred yards off the coast, seals frolicking in the shallows, sun bathers plastering themselves with lotion and the more sensible beachgoers sitting under umbrellas.
Some people even swim.
“Eh? Why do you say it like that?” you ask.
Well, a cold current from the Antarctic flows past Cape Town’s west coast. As lovely as the sea looks and as hot as it can be on the beach, it’s not enough to persuade me to immerse my body in the icy water.
I can’t remember where I saw it, probably Twitter, but a saying about swimming in Cape Town that made me chuckle is “Eleven degrees is a geometric angle, not a temperature.”
Side Note: A few miles away, on the other side of the peninsula, the sea is warmed by a current from the equator. While not as warm as I’d like, I’m prepared to bravely wade ankle-deep in it.
My aversion to cold water might have something to do with my schooldays.
I attended high school in Johannesburg during the 1970s and – if you’ve ever been there you’ll know this – the temperatures in winter can drop below freezing overnight.
One of the lessons we endured was called PT (which I believe stands for Physical Training, though we called it Physical Torture) and, to make matters worse, my PT teacher was a particularly sadistic ex-gymnast.
On the first day of September, the official start of spring, our school swimming season began. It didn’t matter if the lawns were brittle with frost; we had to put on our tiny Speedo bathing trunks (if you don’t know what they look like, click here for a pic) and jump into the swimming pool.
I guess what I’m getting at is that I have an aversion to cold water – perhaps more than most.
Phew! I’m glad to have got that off my chest! 😀
Writing Update
Work is progressing on The Hounds of Magic (the second book in the Daphne Mayne Chronicles of Wydoria series) and I’m still on track to publish it in June.
One of the many things I enjoy about writing is doing research. Sometimes when I’m writing a scene, I pop off to the internet to find out more about a topic to ensure it sounds authentic.
An example is archery. In A Taste of Steel, I mention the bow Neve uses to hunt for game. Although I’ve shot with a bow and arrow I didn’t know a great deal about archery and, to make sure the scene was authentic, I spent hours reading about the history of archery and the many types of bows available.
I found it fascinating and spent far too long learning about archery through the ages, the many types of bows available today and the right way to stand, the correct way to draw the bowstring and a load of other facts besides. Very little of all that found its way into the book, but at least readers will feel what has appeared sounds authentic.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making up stories. I have a memory from when I was still in nappies of laying in my cot, unable to sleep, and engrossed in a daydream about encountering a witch.
In that particular episode, I first saw the witch through broken glass, which when I come to think of it is an odd thing for a toddler. Perhaps I’d seen a broken window when I was out and about with my mother? It must have made quite an impression on my young mind because I remember it well even now.
When I started school and learned to read I loved drifting off into my own little worlds – often during lessons – where I had adventures with characters from books, comics, TV or films, or with characters and situations I made up. The teachers didn’t seem to notice, probably because I developed a habit of losing myself in my imagination while keeping my eyes on them as they taught the class.
I also loved drawing but would often be disappointed because my teachers never wanted me to draw dragons, wizards, unicorns, knights in armour and all those other wonderful things I read about or saw in illustrations or films.
“Draw a picture of your house,” they would say.
But when I added a gnarled old apple tree, complete with a witch picking the fruit, they would say, “Don’t be silly. You don’t have a witch in your garden. Draw a cat instead.”
I was mystified. I didn’t have a cat either.
Adults, eh?
Now that I’m all grown up (or pretending to be) I can indulge my imagination and write and draw what I like! Even witches picking apples.
What I’m working on
I’m excited to announce I’ve published the print version of Daphne Mayne and the Goblin Quest.
If you enjoyed Goblin Quest and are keen to know what happens next, you’ll be pleased to learn I’m on track with the next book, The Hounds of Magic, which I plan to publish in June.
I like to think of my computer, my phone or other gadgets as neighbours rather than tools. It’s not that I don’t have neighbours in the more conventional sense, but that I can’t help anthropomorphising them. (I’ve just stopped to think: how far away from where you live do people stop being neighbours? Does it depend on how densely populated the area is in which you live? I could Google it, but it’s more fun to discuss things, so chip in!)
Getting back to my opening sentence, what I mean is: neighbours are people you (hopefully) get on with most of the time, but occasionally get annoyed with when they do something like park in your driveway or leave a pile of rubbish outside their house for the council to pick up, but which ends up strewn across your front lawn because it’s a windy day.
In those circumstances, you either get passive-aggressive and make pointed comments to the cat when your errant neighbour is within earshot, or you confront them directly. (Incidentally, you’ll notice I didn’t say “my cat”. One of my favourite quotes is “Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.”).
The way I approach my computer or phone when it misbehaves is much the same. I either yell at the offending device, or say things like “This thing’s getting old. It’s about time I upgraded.” in the hope that that will encourage it to bend to my will.
So far I have to admit my tactics haven’t been terribly successful, but it usually makes me feel better.
I should make it clear I’m not a Luddite. When technology works well, I’m perfectly happy.
When I worked in London, I lived miles outside the UK’s capital city and spent many long hours commuting.
I spent four hours on trains each working day. Two hours each way. What was I to do with that time? Read a book or a newspaper? Watch a movie on my phone or laptop? Stare out the window?
I’d always wanted to write, so that’s what I did.
An overcrowded train carriage may not seem the best place for words to flow from the fingertips, but I got on with it and the result was that I’ve learned to write anywhere. I can pop open the lid of my trusty laptop and continue where I left off within seconds.
Writers often say they need to be in a certain environment or in the right mood; some develop rituals or habits which they have to stick to in order to put words down, and I respect that. (I’m the same when it comes to DIY – I counter unkind remarks that I’m dithering by stoutly maintaining that I’m “getting in the zone”).
Here are some of my favourite examples of the wonderful and weird habits of famous authors:
Friedrich Schiller found inspiration in the odour of rotting apples. He kept apples in his desk drawer and let them spoil on purpose.
Lewis Carroll also wrote standing, but only in purple ink.
Dan Brown cures writer’s block by hanging upside down.
George Orwell, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Marcel Proust and Woody Allen all wrote while lying down, either in bed or on a sofa. Truman Capote went as far as saying he was a “completely horizontal author”.
To limit distraction, Francine Prose writes facing a wall.
I should add that I don’t have to be on a train in order to write. Nowadays I sit at a desk, writing to the sound of waves rolling into the beautiful coastline of the Cape’s Atlantic Seaboard a hundred yards from the front door. Okay, so I have to mentally shut out the traffic noise from the main road, but hey, you can’t have everything!
What about you? Do you have a favourite place or ritual to get your creative juices flowing?
I’ve been a fan of Derek Murphy for a few years now. He offers sound advice for writers and gives a huge amount to the writing community, much of it for free.
Recently he’s been running a free online writing course yet still found time to create a template for plotting and writing novels. He’s made the template available for free in various formats including Scrivener.
Derek’s original Scrivener template is fantastic resource and a wonderful aid to writers as it stands. All I’ve done is make a few modifications and added some extra bits to it, which I hope will make it even easier to use.
Please note my version will only work in Scrivener version 3 which, at the time of writing, is the latest version.
The download is a zip archive which contains two files:
The 24 Chapter Scrivener template (24 Chapter Outline by Derek Murphy.scrivtemplate)
An ebook3 format file (ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat) This is an extra – you don’t need it to use the template. If you choose to use it (see instructions later in this post) it can help you compile a nicely formatted epub3 file.
How to import and use the Scrivener template
To import the template into Scrivener, select File=>New Project… from the menu.
A “Project Templates” dialog pops up. Whenever you create a new project, this is where you choose a template for your project. What we’re going to do is import the template you downloaded.
You can do this even if you don’t plan to start a new book just yet. Just follow the instructions to import the template, then cancel the “Project Templates” dialog.
Click the “Options” button at the bottom left of the dialog and select “Import Templates…”
Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the template 24 Chapter Outline by Derek Murphy.scrivtemplate and click the “Import” button.
Now in the Project Templates dialog box, when you scroll down the list of templates you’ll find one called “24 Chapter Outline by Derek Murphy”.
If you’re not ready to start a new project, click the cancel button. Later, when you want to create a new project, select File=>New Project… from Scrivener’s menu and this template will still be there.
To create a new project from this template, select it then click the “Choose…” button.
Scrivener will ask you to name your new project. Once that’s done, you’ll have a new project you can tinker with to your heart’s content.
How my template differs from Derek’s original
What follows is a list of changes and additions I made to the template. As I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with Derek’s original template so please use that if you prefer. All I’ve done is make it fit the way I like to work.
I moved the “One Page Novel Outline | 25 Chapters | Derek” and “CheatSheet” documents out of the Drafts folder. These are now at the top of the binder and won’t be included in the final document when you compile.
I changed the icons on the Act I, Act IIa, Act IIb and Act III folders and unticked the “Include in Compile” checkbox. These folders won’t appear in your compiled file (epub, docx or whatever). If you do want them to appear then tick the “Include in Compile” checkbox in the inspector.
I changed the chapter documents into folders and created a scene document in each chapter folder. Rather than type a whole chapter into one long document, I like to break my chapters into scenes with a separator between scenes. Different authors favour different scene separators, e.g. an empty line, three (or more) asterisks or a graphic.
I unticked the “Include in Compile” checkbox on Derek’s explanatory documents (i.e. the ones whose names start and end with asterisks – e.g. * Ordinary World *). This means you can leave these documents where they are and they won’t appear in your compiled document (epub, pdf, docx etc).
I added Prologue and Epilogue documents in the appropriate places, just in case your book has them. If you don’t require these then move them to the Trash folder.
I added Front matter and Back matter folders. The Front Matter folder contain a dummy cover image and a title page. You should replace the cover image with your book cover image and edit the Title page to suit yourself. The Back Matter folder contains Derek’s original “Author’s Note” and “About the Author” documents. I added “Did you enjoy this book?” (to ask readers to leave a review) and “Copyright” documents. You need to edit all of these to suit your requirements. Note: The Copyright document has placeholders which will be replaced by actual words in your compiled document. e.g. <$projecttitle> will be replaced by the title of your book. Scrivener gets this from the metadata section of the compile dialog box (click the second icon at the top of the right-hand column of the compile dialog to view or edit the metadata).
I added a Template Sheets folder. This contains a “Character Sheet” which I put together from Derek’s slides and video. (Any mistakes or exclusions in the Character Sheet are mine). To use the Character Sheet template for your own characters, right-click the Characters folder in the Research folder and select Add=>New from Template=>Character Sheet.
I added a Section dividers etc folder which contains an example image you can use to separate scenes when you compile. If you choose to use the ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat file (see the download button at the beginning of this page) it will use the “section-divider” image in this folder to separate the scenes. You can replace this image with your own (make sure you rename your image to “section-divider” once you’ve dragged it into the Section dividers etc folder, or edit the “Scene” section layout in the compile dialog and change name in the “separator between sections” field).
I also added my own “Section type”, “Label” and “Status” stuff. You can modify these to suit yourself. Note: the ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat file (see the download button at the beginning of this page) uses the Section Types in this template. If you add or delete any Section Types then you’ll have to assign section layouts in the compile dialog.
Lastly, I changed the icons on Derek’s Act folders and the explanatory documents to make them stand out. This gives a visual indicator about which documents should not be included in the compile. It should help with navigating the project.
That’s it for the template. You don’t have to use it as is, of course. Change it so that it works for your style of writing.
How to import and use the epub3 format file
When I started using Scrivener the biggest headache was compiling. Over the years I’ve learned how it works and I can now compile epub, mobi, PDF, and Word docs relatively easily. If you struggle with compiling, the ebook format file I’ve included in the download (i.e. ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat) can help. What follows are brief instructions for importing and using the format file. I’ll do a more comprehensive post about how to use Scrivener’s compile feature in another blog post.
To import a format you have to open the compile dialog:
Select File=>Compile (or click the “compile” button on the menu bar)
Click the little cog icon at the bottom left of the compile dialog and select “Import Formats”. Navigate to where you saved the ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat file and click the “Open” button.
When Scrivener asks “Where would you like to import the selected formats?”, choose My Formats.
If you choose “Project Formats” you’ll only be able to use the format in the project that’s currently open in Scrivener. Choosing “My formats” means you’ll be able to use the format in any project, even ones you’ve created previously.
To use the format, select “ePub 3 Ebook (.epub)” at the top of the compile dialog, then select “Ebook3 01” under My Formats in the Formats column. (If you want, you can rename this by right-clicking “Ebook3 01” and selecting “Edit format…”)
If you use this format on a project you have created using the 24 Chapter Outline by Derek Murphy template (from the download at the top of this page), then all the Section Layouts in the middle column of the compile should be correctly assigned. All you need to do is move your mouse over to the third column and edit the metadata by clicking the little “tag” icon (second icon from the left).
It’s important to enter data in at least the top section (title and authors) but you should add as much data as you can. The metadata is stored in epub files and is used by epub readers and other systems to catalogue and organise books in a sensible way.
As an example of how the metadata can be used in your project, if you created the project from the above template then then the copyright document in the project has placeholders (<$projecttitle> for example) which will automatically be filled in with the corresponding metadata when you compile.
Example of how your epub3 will look
Once you click the “compile” the epub Scrivener produces will be formatted similar to the one below:
Sample epub viewed in Calibre’s ebook viewer
What extras are added by the ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat format file?
The section layouts are already assigned which removes the pain of you having to do so. Feel free, of course, if you want to change or edit any of them.
At the top of the page, the chapter number (which is the “Chapter Heading” section layout in the Scrivener project), has a line above and below it.
The scenes are separated by a graphic. This graphic is the image called “section-divider” in the “Section dividers etc” folder. You can replace this graphic with your own. All you have to do is delete the existing “section-divider” image, then drag a suitable image from your Mac or PC into the “Section dividers etc” folder, and rename your new image “section-divider”. If you don’t want an image between scenes then just delete “section-divider” from the “Section dividers etc” folder. When you compile, Scrivener will just put a blank line between the scenes.
Note for Windows users
I don’t have Scrivener 3 for Windows, so I am unable to test this format file in the Scrivener 3 for Windows release version. When I wrote this article, the final release wasn’t available and I could only test on the Scrivener for Windows beta version 3.
On the Windows beta version the results weren’t satisfactory. It put the lower horizontal line – which should have gone under the chapter heading – at the end of the chapter (you can’t see that in the screen grab below because I’ve only grabbed the first page of the chapter).
Sample Windows epub viewed in Calibre’s ebook viewer
The Windows beta version also made the “section-divider” image too large, and rendered the first paragraph in each scene with the setting that should have only applied to the first scene of the chapter, ie:
Uppercase the first three words of a chapter’s opening paragraph and don’t indent it.
Don’t indent the first line of subsequent scenes’ opening paragraphs.
Hopefully, the above issues with the Scrivener for Windows beta 3 have been addressed in the final release. If you’ve tried out my format file in Windows let me know in the comments how you got on.
I hope you find this useful. I know a lot of writers don’t like using Scrivener to compile their books and many turn to other apps to create their final manuscripts. In a future blog post I’ll go deeper into Scrivener’s compile feature with the aim of demystifying it.
This means you can use the ebook3-with-extra-formatting.scrformat file for formatting your own books as much as you like. You can also remix, adapt, and build upon it and give it to others as long as you license your new creation under the identical terms.
The article was converted to text by the Internet Archive using OCR. I have corrected some mistakes resulting from the process of converting the original scanned image to text but I haven’t changed the spelling (e.g. John Bowring’s spelling of the famous poet and playwright’s name as Shakspeare, rather than today’s accepted spelling, Shakespeare).
Pixie traditions are passing away. You may find now and then on the Moors, and the skirts of the Moors in Devonshire, peasants who will be willing to talk about those amusing sprites whose history is a sort of local heritage; and if you can get a rural chronicler launched into the full tide of friendly communication, starting with “’Ees ! ’eee ! I’ve a yeard tell o’en,” you may be sure you will be greatly edified, and find that the poetical and the imaginative element, having much raw material to work with, is well worth studying even among the untaught shepherds, who watch the wandering flocks scattered over the heather, and who from their rude granite-walled and straw-thatched huts by night have little to look at but the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars, and by day the granite boulders, the golden gorse, the purple heath, and a few sparsely-spread wild flowers, waving grasses, and the scant herbage which adorn the downs.
But I can remember the time when some- thing better than tradition interested me in listening to the tales of the Dartmoor rustics; for they spoke not only of what they had “a’ yeard on,” but of what they had “zeed.” Those were the old men of that generation, and as “’twas sixty years ago,” we were taken back considerably more than a century, to a time when ghosts and witches were as “common as blackberries,” and any one doubting their existence would be overwhelmed with a weight of evidence quite sufficient to crush incredulity. Not to believe in ghosts and witches was to be as bad as “a wicked infidel.” John Wesley himself denounced those who denied their existence as “deniers of their Bible.”
Ghosts and witches were almost always associated with fears, and frights, and visitations of evil; but the pixies were joyous, happy, loving, dancing, singing, sportive little creatures. They were social, not solitary. They played many tricks, all for fun or for discipline, never for malignity. If they did mischief, it was to punish, to reprove, to correct. Everybody thought it better to laugh at than to quarrel with them — better to be regarded as their allies than their enemies. So little did they impress my childish thoughts with terror that I absolutely longed, when taken to see the green turf on which they held their moonlight revels —
By fountain dear, or spangled star-light sheen,
the granite basins in whose crystal waters they bathed, the tangled recesses into which they retreated from mortal observation, — I longed and languished for an opportunity of looking on them, of knowing from my own experience that they really existed. But alas ! though the territory over which they ruled was most familiar to me, I never, sooth to say, have been privileged to see an individual of the race.
They were strangely blended in my mind with Queen Mab , and Oberon, and Titania , and Puck, and the other Shakspearian creations, and I often fancied that Devonian story had reached the ears of that bewitching wonder-worker, who turned pebbles into jewels, and found in everything a soul of beauty and of truth, — found it himself and revealed it to the world. Assuredly the rough rustics of the moors never heard of Shakspeare, but they tell the very tales which he has “married to immortal verse,” and the deeds of Puck and his comrades are but the records of the daily doings of the pixie people, who —
Frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm[1]; Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
[1] An old Devonian word for yeast
“Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act ii. Sc. 1.
The peat-bogs of the moors of the Dart and the Exe are the very places into which the pixies beguiled their victims, often youthful lovers who went out courting after sunset, and were left “stogged in the mux” and “begegged” in the “neart,” till on “the dimmet,” the first break of the twilight, their tormentors disappeared and relieved them from the derisive laughter which was not the least of the annoyances inflicted by the imps.
Shakspeare’s Puck revels in the variety of devices by which he entices the objects of his attention into brakes (furze-covered ground) and quagmires. He transforms himself into various animals, the better to carry on his trade. The Devonian traditions do not incarnate the pixies as the instruments of delusion, but represent these instruments as being under the command of the directing influence. Puck says —
I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,— Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar; Sometimes a horse I’ll be, sometimes a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and hum, Like horse, dog, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
The pixie is not any of these, but he commands and controls them all.
A contemporary of Shakspeare, Drayton, in his “Nymphidia,” gives some further details of Puck’s proceedings, which are abundantly warranted by Devonshire authorities.
This Puck but seems a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceive us. And leading us makes us to stray Long winter nights, out of the way, And when we stick in mire and clay, He doth with laughter leave us.
But the pixies in Devon are decidedly cleverer than Puck himself, for they do not wet their feet on the mud, and not being “dreaming dolts,” they mount the “ragged colts” of the farmers, and use them for seducing their owners, amusing themselves by tangling their manes and tails into “pixie-rings,” as may be “zeed” to the present hour by any one who will take the trouble to verify the fact, and ask any Dartmoor shepherd-boy to point out the pixies’ hosses.
In Devon I never heard the name of the pixies’ king. I dare say Shakspeare was right, as he generally is, in telling us it was Oberon; but in these days, when the derivation of almost any one word may be traced up to almost any other word, between Puck, pucksee , and pixie, any one may undoubtedly establish a satisfactory analogy. I remember in Smyrna, when some odd oriental usage was remarked on, which had been introduced into a family half English half Levantine, the excuse of the housewife was — “You know that when one is in Turkey, one must do as the Turkeys does.” The reasoning was allowed to be conclusive, and the pixies and Puck are surely as nearly allied to one another as Turkeys and the Turks.
It is quite dear that the Shakspearian Puck learnt his tricks among the Devonian pixies. Hear what he says : —
I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And tailor[2] cries, and falls into a cough, And then the whole quire hold their hips and Ioffe; And waxen in their mirth, and neeze[3] and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there.
[2] Squatting down as a tailor. [3] “laughter bolding both his sides.” Milton.
How much more delicately does Titania deal with her subjects, and in what a graceful spirit call upon them to minister to her behests.
I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep And sing, while thou, on pressed flower, dost sleep; And I will purge thy mental grossness so, That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Titania undoubtedly was thinking of Devon when she expressed her longings : —
I do but beg a little changeling boy To be my henchman;
for Devonshire, is above all other lands, the land of changeling boys and girls, and the pixies had a great deal to do with these transformations. I recollect hearing the history of one who had the gravity of an ancient woman from her very childhood, who talked as if she were fifty years old, when she was only five. They called her “The Bee” and she “gathered honey every day.” It must have been a portion of the ambrosia, and helped to famish the metheglin of the pixie court. Certainly it must have been for one of these precocious little creatures, full of wit and wisdom, brains in their toes and in their fingers’ ends, that the Fairy Queen expressed so strong an affection. Out of a “changeling” Shakspeare might have created an Ariel to meet the pixies : —
On hill, in dale, in forest, or in mead, By pav’d fountain, or by rushy brooks, Or on the beached margent of the sea, To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.
The pixies were great explorers, familiar with the caves of the ocean, the hidden sources of the streams and the recesses of the land; but they had their favourite haunts for their routs and revellings; they had a hierarchy of rank; and the subordinates had their tasks appointed to them by the superior authorities. Titania tells us how, after “a roundel and a fairy song,” she sends them
For the third part of a minute, hence, Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds.
A very benevolent purpose. In Devonshire the eglantine is called the canker-rose; and her soldiery she orders out
To war with rear-mice[4] for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats; and some, keep back The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.
[4] A Devonshire word for a bat.
And here I cannot refrain from referring to that exceedingly beautiful passage, which belongs to the same act in the same play from which I have been quoting, in which the pansy, bearing in the west its poetical name to the present day, — is called the “western flower” in the well-known compliment to the Virgin Queen : —
The fair vestal, crowned by the west. The imperial votress who passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free; Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell; It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound; And maidens call it “love in idleness.”
All these fancies Shakspearian and traditions Devonian, being blended, somewhat confusedly in my mind—
I had a dream — The pixie queen and court Came down from Heltor’s heights— a choir of bees Choruss’d their advent, and the vernal gales Perfumed their path with odours heather-born: Her name Titania — ’twas the evening hour; She sat upon a pearly nautilus, And it was fringed with glow-worms— while it roll’d On wheels the dews had silver’d. Butterflies Her steeds; and round her floated fairy-girls, Who from the Demoisels had borrow’d wings; And, as their sovereign lighted on the earth, They sang soft songs, and follow’d in a train To a rude bason on a granite rock, With crystal water filled, in which they bathed; Rising refresh’d, they shook their golden locks, And tripp’d away to an adjacent sod, Green, flowery, soft, and there, in mazy rills, Danced till the rising of the matin star, Then hasten’d with swift footsteps to the grots In Heltor’s rifts, with moss and lichens lined; The cock crows hailed for earth another dawn, The carolling skylarks took the news to heaven; The moon was lost in daylight, and the sun Assumed his undivided sovereignty.
It was said, very much in accordance with the Shakspearian representation, that various missions were assigned to the pixies by their rulers, of the success or failure of which they were expected to give an account for the entertainment of their companions and of the pixie court. Sometimes the rustics discovered and thwarted their purposes, but the plans were generally too well laid to be detected or prevented. It was their special duty to punish the incredulous for their incredulity, and to play their tricks upon hunks and scolds; to awaken jealousies among lovers, and above all other sports, to “employ Jack and the Lantern” to beguile the peasants into wet marshes and vuzzy -brakes (gorse-heather).
To bewitch the cows’ udders, so that they would give no milk, to pull away the stool from under the milk-maid, and to burst into laughter when they saw her lying on her back, to spoil the rennet, to prevent the milk from curdling, to turn the cider sour in the cellar during thunder-storms, or to pull out the spill, so that the beverage should be wasted on the floor, to knock the cider-flask out of the hand that was lifting it to the mouth, and to pour its contents into the bosom of the would- be drinker; to drive the pigs with stinging- nettles into woods or ditches, and then, by deceitful grunts and noises to misdirect the lads who had been sent forth in search of the wanderers, these are among the tricks of common life; but at times bolder adventures were attempted, such as stealing the sermon from the curate’s pocket when he was mounting the pulpit stairs, on the rare occasions when the rector was to be among the auditory; to cause the doctor’s horse to trip and to fling the rider when he was on the way to the squire, who had required his immediate presence, having broken his arm in a fox-hunt; to put back the ‘tumey’s (solicitor) watch a full hour, so that his case was disposed of before he could get to the ‘sizes. Of such stories rich gatherings might have been made a century ago, but they have passed into oblivion with their narrators.
A pixie meal has been described as taking place in a recess where the carpet is of green moss, a large fungus the central table, and the guests are seated around upon mushrooms, which are generally called pixie stools by the Devonshire peasants. Barberries and whortle-berries are introduced on leaves, and attendant bees bring in honey to sweeten them, bluebottles carry dew in buttercups and harebells, and thrushes sing songs during the repast. It is said that their domestic quarrels, which are not unfrequent, and generally are attributable to some jealous annoyance, are settled at these festivities. These little misunderstandings, and the mischievous character of some of the pixie tricks, are considered evidence that they do not belong to an angelic race, and are not wholly free from the infirmities which characterise sinful and mortal men. They constantly display their benignant qualities towards their favourites. If, during the night, they torment some with pinches and nightmares, they visit others with pleasing dreams. If it is the business of some to perplex and molest the objects of their dislike, others are engaged in fanning the winter fires, helping the leavening of the loaf, sharpening the knives, sweetening or strengthening the cider, encouraging the ewes to bear twin lambs, filling the cows’ udders with milk, and rendering all sorts of kindly services to those they look on with a friendly eye. And among the rustics to have the good-will of the pixies was a strong recommendation in the family and the social circle.
It is not easy in old age to give distinctness to the recollections of impressions which had in them something undefined and shadowy even when they were made on the susceptibilities of youth. I had a great desire to know something more about the pixies than I could learn from those who, while they most religiously believed in their existence, had an apprehension that if they exhibited too much curiosity and pushed their inquiries too far into the mysteries of the pixie world, they would be punished for their irreverent daring. Though they did not say so, yet they felt like the blue-eyed maiden of the poet-laureate, that “doubt is devil-born,” and that their souls’ perdition or salvation was in some way or other involved in the rejection or reception of the evidences of the supernatural world which they believed to exist around them. What seems very silly to the enlightened may be very sacred to the ill-instructed, and if authority could rule the matter, ghosts and witches would form a part of authentic history at an epoch not much anterior to our own. It was one of my early fancies that a pixie had communicated to me, while I was asleep, some particulars of their nature and mode of life.
We know not whence we came nor where we go, But only that we are. We live, we love; Life has its cares and pains, but not like yours; Love its perplexities, its hopes, its fears, Its jealousies, not such as trouble men. Created, and not self-existent, we Must be imperfect, for perfection dwells With God alone. Yet we have powers above Any to men conceded, we can hear Sounds which to you are silence, and to us Your music is but discord; many a sight Veil’d from your eyes to us is visible, We touch what you can reach not,— all the change Of seasons, night and day, and foul and fair, Affect us not; above you and beneath We visit, where no mortal foot has trod; We know no disobedience to the powers That rule us. Order is our law supreme, Much is unknown to us, but this we know, That we were made for happiness. We talk Of past, of present, of what is, has been, And may be, but the toil be is not ours, Nor can we draw aside the veil that hides The mysteries only known where all is known.
It has been remarked with much truth that if some of the monastic orders sought the seclusion of desert and desolate places for the purposes of penitence, others with a view to enjoyment appropriated the most beautiful spots for their domicile. Though the Devonshire pixies were fond of locomotion, and had their places of retreat in the less accessible parts of the mountains and the moors, yet nature’s charms had to them special attractions, and many of the tales told are connected with the Devonian woods and waterfalls. Bocky Fall, Fingal Bridge, Combes, (valleys) on the banks of the Dart and the Teign, have been pointed out as among their favourite haunts. I have heard the tale of a shepherd boy who fell asleep in the midst of his flock, with whom a quartet of pixies determined to amuse themselves. One fastened him to the ground and kept his eyes dosed, another tickled his nostrils with barley beard, a third cried “Wolf! Wolf!” in his ears, and the fourth bewitched the sheep, which fled scampering away in all directions. After holding their victim for some time in agonised helplessness, they released him with screams of laughter, while the poor lad run affrighted into a furze-bush, where he was found by his master, covered with scratches and bruises. But the pixies having enjoyed the fun, collected the sheep together, and all was well as it ended well.
The pixies were never represented as having any religious rites or services. They were not reputed ever to have taken part in ecclesiastical matters. In Catholic countries popular superstitions are not unfrequently made subservient to priestly influence. The rural clergy in the ruder districts of Devon were formerly little superior in intelligence to the rustics among whom they lived, their habits were moulded to the civilisation which surrounded. In listening to their stories —
I, a credulous, confiding youth, Doubted no more than they; why should I doubt? Their ignorance was faith, but mine was bliss, And now that age and philosophic thought Have swept the bloom of young romance away, The pixies all have fled — like other dreams.
You know those archetypal pictures of the Devil? The ones where his black hair is brushed back from his widow’s peak, his beard is shaped to a point?
That’s what one of my teachers looked like when I was thirteen, fresh from primary school and thrust unprepared into the big world of high school. He took us for a subject called Industrial Arts. Nowadays I think it’s been rebranded as Design and Technology or something similar, but in 1973 it still bore the nineteenth century moniker of “Industrial Arts”.
Although I attended a coeducational school, we were split from the girls for this subject. They did Home Economics; we did Industrial Arts. Neither gender was offered a choice in the matter.
Our first lesson with the Industrial Arts teacher was unlike any I’d ever experienced. We filed into a classroom filled not with desks but drawing boards and stools, strange contraptions that we hadn’t encountered before. These were not modern drawing boards by any means: the equipment was worn and out of date, but scrupulously clean.
The first thing the teacher taught us was how to use our left hand to hold the short arm of our T-Square against the left-hand side of the board, so that the long arm was perfectly horizontal.
Next he showed us how to mount a sheet of A3 paper on our drawing board, using masking tape to hold it in place. This involved placing the paper on the board with the long sides at the top and bottom. It was held steady with the right hand while placing the T-Square along the lower edge of the paper. Then came a fiddly process of keeping the T-Square absolutely still with one hand while using the other hand to position the paper until the lower edge was parallel with the T-Square. The really tricky bit was letting go of the T-Square (but not allowing it fall to the floor), all the while keeping your right hand on the paper to stop it moving, then grabbing a piece of masking tape with your left hand (you remembered to tear two short pieces off the roll first, right?) then gently taping the top-left corner of the paper to the board, then reaching over your right arm with your left and taping the other corner.
There was no option for left-handed kids to have a T-Square that could be used on the right-hand side of their drawing boards. They couldn’t even turn their T-Square upside-down, seeing as the upper and lower sides of the long arm weren’t parallel.
Being right-handed, that wasn’t a worry for me. What caused the blood to drain from my face was when the teacher went around the classroom inspecting each boy’s paper. If your sheet wasn’t perfectly horizontal, or was slightly crumpled, or its pristine whiteness was marred by finger smudges, or the tape wasn’t placed correctly, you were sent to the front of the class.
That initial lesson about half the boys ended up at the front, shuffling their feet and wondering what was going to happen next.
They were caned. One after the other they were made to bend over and receive a vicious stroke from the teacher’s cane, a finger-thick bamboo rod as long as an arm. Once punished they were told to return to their seats, which they did, sitting gingerly on their stools at their drawing boards.
Next we had to make a light pencil mark ten millimetres from the top of the paper, then place the T-Square on the mark and draw a horizontal line from one edge of the paper to the other. This, we were told, was to be our drawing’s top border. Every technical drawing we were to do in that class would start with drawing border lines ten millimetres from each edge of the paper.
Again the teacher moved around the class, this time checking the pencil line. If the line was nine millimetres from the paper’s top edge, or eleven millimetres, you were sent to the front of the class. The same if the line wasn’t horizontal.
If the pencil line was not the same consistency along its entire length, off you went to the front. This was particularly difficult because we used ordinary wooden pencils that had to be sharpened to a point. Even at that time, 1973, you could buy self-propelling pencils with leads that were designed to draw lines that didn’t vary in thickness. If a self-propelling pencil’s lead was 0.5 mm thick, then it drew a line 0.5 mm wide from beginning to end. Not so for us with our wooden pencils. As our pencil leads wore, the lines would become progressively thicker. We had to learn a technique where the pencil is leaned in the direction of travel and twirled between the forefinger and thumb as it is drawn along the top edge of the T-Square. This stops the point flattening into a chisel shape, and sort of helps the lines remain reasonably even. It’s a tricky technique to teach to thirteen-year-olds and even seasoned hands struggle to use it.
To help keep our pencils sharp we were issued with a small piece of sandpaper which we were expected to use to sand our pencils to a fine point – but not too fine otherwise the point would crumble at the slightest pressure and make an unsightly mess on the paper. It didn’t help that the teacher terrified us. He would punish us for the most trivial things. Besides the infractions I’ve already mentioned, if you drew construction lines that he could see, he caned you (construction lines are the preparatory faint pencil lines drawn before committing to the final lines). If the hand-drawn lettering in your labels and dimensions wasn’t perfect, he caned you, if the arrowheads on your dimensions weren’t three millimetres long, it was the cane again.
You can imagine how few of us mastered technical drawing.
That first lesson ended with only two boys out of sixteen not being caned. All we had achieved was taping our paper to the boards and drawing a single horizontal line.
Subsequent lessons were just as fraught. As I remember, we only produced two or three simple technical drawings the entire term. We all hated the lessons, and I was the only boy in that term who wasn’t caned by the Industrial Arts teacher. Drawing came easily to me. I’d been sketching with pencils since I first picked one up as a toddler. I filled my spare time with making things out of paper, wood, cardboard – whatever I could find – and had learned how to use rulers, knives, scissors and other hand tools at home.
The funny thing was, technical drawing wasn’t the worst lesson. That came when the teacher took us for metal-work the first time.
We assembled in our hated technical drawing classroom as usual, then he led us in a silent line from there to the metal-workshop.
He made us stand in a group near the door while he pointed to things in the workshop and told us what they were.
There were three rows of workbenches, each with a vice on the front and a line of tools laid neatly in a rack at the rear.
He told us the jaws of the vices were to be closed at the end of each lesson and the handles were to be placed in a vertical position. Each boy would clean his workbench when the bell went for the end of the period and sweep the floor around him. All tools were to be replaced in their correct storage place, either in the rack on the workbench or – he indicated a rack on the wall – the storage rack for larger tools.
Everything had to be clean and neat. The tools had to be treated with respect.
“Respect!” he repeated.
At this point, his breathing quickened, and his eyes gleamed.
“But I know what you’re like. I know what you’re like! You don’t respect my tools!” His tone was unusually rough.
Despite what he said, none of us had been into his workshop before. We huddled near the door, our guts curdled in terror.
He stalked over to a bin and took out a piece of three millimetre thick flat steel bar as long as his hand and about fifteen millimetres wide.
His eyes grew large, the point of his beard quivered and a flush spread up his neck.
“I know you! I’ve seen what you do!” he said.
He opened the nearest vice and gripped the bar in it, not lined up straight as one would normally do, but poking out the side at a jaunty angle. He closed the vice, pushed the handle down hard, leaning on it with all his weight.
“You don’t need to over tighten a vice, but I know what you’re like!” he said, his voice rising. “This is what you do!”
He grabbed a hammer from the rear of the bench and laid into the vice’s handle, each crash of the hammer forcing the vice to clamp the bar tighter.
“I told you not to do this!” he shrieked, ignoring the fact that he had done no such thing.
Sweat beaded his forehead. With a final blow, he tossed the hammer onto the bench.
He was panting and his tie was skew, his jacket rumpled.
We stepped back as he launched himself towards us. But it wasn’t us he was aiming for. He seized a hacksaw from the rack on the wall near where we stood.
For a second he paused in disbelief, then he whirled to face us and pointed to the hacksaw.
Close to the handle there was fingertip-sized chunk missing from the blade.
“Look! Look! One of you did this!” Spittle flew from his lips.
We shrank back in horror.
Eyes wild, he turned away, raised the hacksaw above his head like an axe, and ran at the metal bar clamped in the vice, screaming a gurgling wail.
He smashed the hacksaw blade on to the bar and wrenched the tool backwards and forwards, yelling incoherently.
The blade bent alarmingly as it cut into the steel. He pressed on with his frenzied attack, twisting the saw from side to side as he pushed the blade back and forth against the metal.
Like an overloaded spring, the blade snapped where the piece was missing. A shard of blade shot into his right hand and pierced the flesh at the base of his thumb. He screamed again, louder.
The broken saw clattered to the floor.
He whipped around and faced us, his hand raised. Blood welled from the wound and dripped down his wrist. He glared at us, his mouth rimmed with froth.
“If any of you bastards bleed on my floor, I’ll kill you!” he shrieked.
The only things we learned in metalwork was how to keep the place clean and to never tighten a vice with blows from a hammer.
It’s taken longer than it should have but, finally, it’s here: The third book in the Hollow series, A Taste of Steel, is finished and ready to purchase.
In this book Drome gets caught up in a mutiny against the queen of Kyro – the country neighbouring Glaskwall – and is soon up to his neck in hot water (literally!), threats, plots, executions, revenge, murder and a host of other nasty business.
It’s not that he wants to be involved, but he just can’t help rubbing people up the wrong way.
What a shame he boasts to the leader of the mutineers about how much steel there is in his village. It’s not as though he didn’t know that metal is scarce in Hollow… but sometimes his mouth says things before his brain catches up.
He’d better hope that Neve can help out, because if she can’t save his skin, then no one can.
As for his village, Amblesby, with three armies on its doorstep, all there because of a slip of his tongue and all wanting the precious steel lying around, what chance of survival do the villagers have?
We’re having a pint together in the pub, sitting at an old wooden table at the back of the room next to a fly-specked poster advertising a gig featuring a pop group from the eighties. There’s only one other patron in the place. He leans sideways against the wall, his grey hair pressed against a dark patch in the maroon flock wallpaper. He hasn’t moved since we arrived.
‘I had an odd dream last night,’ I say.
Your eyes lift and your gaze darts over my shoulder at the exit.
‘Not another one about leather underwear, I hope?’ you say.
I wince. ‘You promised not to mention that again.’
‘Sorry.’
You drain your pint in two deep gulps.
I’m taken aback. Your tankard had been almost full.
‘I need a leak,’ you say. ‘Just going to pop to the loo.’
You can’t stop your eyes looking past me as you contemplate the pub’s door again.
I put my hand on your arm. ‘Wait. I want to tell you about my dream.’
You sigh and sink back in your place.
‘Alright,’ you say, casting a meaningful look at your empty tankard.
It’s your round, you cheapskate, but I relent and head for the bar, all the time watching you for any sudden moves. But the promise of a free beer keeps your buttocks applied to your chair.
The landlord sees me coming and wipes a greasy cloth over a couple of tankards he takes from under the counter. The pub’s dim yellow lighting oozes off the glasses as he puts them on the counter.
‘Same again?’ he asks.
I nod.
He wipes his hands on his trousers, which, unbelievably, are cleaner than the wiping cloth. The dim light makes the patina of dust and sweat on his skin look like scales. That and the blackness of his eyes give him a reptilian appearance.
He pulls two pints with ill grace, like he’s doing me a favour.
Back at our table, I put a full tankard in front of you.
You murmur something which might have been thanks.
‘My pleasure,’ I say. I take a deep breath and your shoulders slump in defeat.
‘I can’t remember what happened earlier in the dream,’ I begin. ‘Only that there’s this man – about my size and build – who’s opposed to everything I do. I’m not sure why. I have no idea what I’ve done to turn him against me. The thing is, I can’t argue with him any longer. The only course of action is to fight. I mean physically with fists and stuff.
‘Fighting isn’t my strong point, but when he ran at me I knocked him to the ground. He was lying on his back and I shouted, “You’re so anacronymistic!”
‘He didn’t get up, just lay there looking puzzled. “That’s not even a word,” he said.
‘I realised what I’d done.
‘“I meant you’re anachronistic and you use too many acronyms,” I said.
‘He laughed, and I started laughing too.’
My mouth’s dry. I take a mouthful of beer and watch your face for a response.
The seconds tick by.
‘Is that it?’ you say, your expression deadpan.
‘Yes. That’s it.’
Your shoulders lift and you sip your beer, relaxed.
‘A load of bollocks, of course,’ you say. You lean back in your seat. ‘At least it wasn’t another one of your dreams about bu-‘
‘Don’t!’ I interrupt.
I’m flabbergasted. Why are you being so dull? Aren’t you at least a little bit amazed at the creativity of my subconscious? I mean, how many people invent words?
As a writer, I’m aware that using made-up words can alienate readers. Nevertheless, that’s a rule flouted with extravagance by Shakespeare. The Bard is famous for coining many words. Some put that number around 1,700 though cautious experts say it’s more likely to be in the hundreds.
On the other hand, Shakespeare is considered a genius. With the best will in the world, I’m not quite there yet.
‘You might not be impressed,’ I say, ‘but I’m going to use anacronymistic in my writing, see if I don’t.’
‘Just don’t expect it to appear in the OED any time soon,’ you say. ‘It’s not like it even makes sense. How can you have anachronistic acronyms? Acronyms are a twentieth century invention.’
You shake your head. ‘Nobody will use a difficult to pronounce word you’ve made up about a naked guy in your dreams.’
‘Eh? I didn’t say he was naked.’
You give me that look, the one that says you know me better than I know myself. ‘You didn’t have to.’
I see what you’re doing. You’re bored with the conversation, so you derail it.
‘It’s a damned good word,’ I say, steering the discussion back on course. ‘Anacronymistic. Remember,’ – I tap the side of my cranium – ‘this is where it began.’
You don’t reply. You pull your phone from your pocket and hold it so I can’t see the screen. You tap away for a few seconds, then turn it to face me.
