Forget Laboring on Labor Day - Free Reading! News of England and Top Tips

That book about which I have been blathering on about for the last year or more will be free for your Kindle (or Kindle app) over Labor Day Weekend.  To be more precise, it will be free to download  from midnight, Pacific time on August 30 to midnight September 2, 2013.

Here's a the link, for your linking convenience.

IN OTHER NEWS

I bought a plane ticket yesterday BOS to LHR - or, for you non baggage handlers, that's Boston to London.  I'll be over in Blighty from September 15 to the 23.

This trip is a case of how a mighty oak (trip to England) may grow from a small acorn (a twitter post).
I know: Please to explain!

Sometime in July The Paris Review (which I don't read but which I do follow on Twitter) posted this picture:

I had to get a closer look at that, obviously.  

Turns out that William Gladstone left his very fabulous personal library in trust for the public.  That's it, in the picture.  The library (and his whole estate) is in Flintshire in north Wales and (are you sitting down?) you can stay there!  For not very much.  Read all about it here.

So, I booked a room the very night I ran across that twitter post.  The deposit was non refundable and I figured I would be forced thereby to actually go to England.  

Of course, my head cooled thereafter.  It's a hassle scheduling things at work and the kids (my son is away on a school trip to Maine that week), it's expensive blah blah.  But I got a shove over the Atlantic from our English friends who are visiting Vermont as we speak and who leaned on the family Chief Financial Officer (not me) to allow the visit. They held out promises of accommodations for the days when I am not in Wales, tours of Oxford, London bookshops etc. into the mix.  And so.... BOS to LHR it is.

Another big pull was exerted by the fact that G's Library is only about half an hour from Erddig Hall, in Wrexham, Wales.  Erdigg is the National Trust property on which I based the fictional Quarter Sessions in the above-mentioned book.  I spent years reading about Erddig as I was writing and I feel like I am making a kind of pilgrimage.

Here is a little bit of that magic place as well:

So, that's my big news.  I promise to report back.  

ONE LAST THING...

I like to provide the occasional top tip here.  My way of giving back because I am that kind of generous person.  I listen to Pandora these days when I am at my computer and have been introduced to a lot of music that I love and that I couldn't believe that I had missed (some of it is not new).

So, I am here to recommend to you Knuddlemaus by Ulrich Schnauss

(nothing to look at in this video, but you can hear the music)

and most especially, this Morrissey Song: Come Back to Camden.

This song has such a hold on me right now that I had to research it on Wikipedia.  It was written by Morrissey and Boz Boorer, (whom I probably saw when I went to that Morrissey concert in Burlington last fall though I had no idea at the time what a big deal he is, musically speaking).  I am wondering if one of them might be the reincarnation of W.H. Auden or something because this song is a work of genius.  (Thank you, Youtube fans, for posting...)

The Dutch are Still a Great Nation

Highway Hexes

I commute to work three days a week on I 89 - Vermont's main east-west artery.  It has not been a good summer for trying to drive on I 89 - washouts, accidents, and paving projects have made it a misery - it made me wonder if there wasn't something more going on...

Ottanta Sette threw a pinch of powdered oak bark into the teapot, gave it a swirl, and dropped the whole business with a rattle onto her sister’s kitchen table.  Overhead another 18-wheeler passed, causing the bunches of dried herbs tied to rafters to sway.

“Oh God,” Sette said as she collapsed into a kitchen chair.  “You know Nove, It’s not as relaxing in Vermont as advertised. I mean, that calendar you sent me for winter solstice? It’s all autumn leaves and cows on green hills, then you get here and it’s all the same old traffic. I might as well have stayed in New York.  Between my stomach and my tooth… I am at my limit.  I mean the limit.”

            Ottanta Nove furrowed her brow as she poured the potion. The note of exasperation in her big sister’s voice was new, and alarming.  “I could arrange an accident,” she suggested brightly. “You’ve always enjoyed those, and it would quiet things down for awhile.” 

Nove’s den, like that of all her sister Interstate witches, was magically hidden just beneath an overpass on the highway to which she had been assigned and for which she had been named.  (The great Strega di Autostrada had deplored English as dull and unromantic.  She had decreed that all her followers must have Italian names). “How’s about another Jack-knifed tractor trailer?”

            Sette waved her gnarled hand dismissively. “I’m not in the mood.”

            What was this?

For Sette to lose enthusiasm for car crashes was like losing the moon from the sky.  Nove tried again. “Maybe some more rain? A good deluge might just knock out some bridge pilings.” She hopped up from the table and grabbed the apothecary jar marked “PLUVIA”. Even in the murk, she could see that it was nearly empty.

“Uhm. You didn’t bring some Pluvia along by any chance?”

            Sette gazed at her younger sister in disbelief. The girl had never been the brightest torch in the forest and she was not improving with age. “I’m on vacation, Nove? Remember. I’m supposed to be on my Vermont vacation.”

            The note of disgust in Sette’s voice stung. Nove had been having one of the most brilliant seasons of her career. OK. Maybe she’d been a little free with the Pluvia.  But look at the results!  Nothing short of mayhem. Accidents, tie-ups, Vermont driver vexation unsurpassed in half a generation. Nove had expected praise and enthusiasm from her famous older sister. Instead, Sette was a picture of unutterable weariness.

“Honestly – and this is not to get back to headquarters, you understand?” Sette continued, “but closed lanes don’t do for me what they once did.”

            Nove practically stumbled. “You don’t mean that.”

            “I do.”

            “Why, you were the one who taught me the late merging spell - even before I knew the alphabet! The snarls you caused on I 87! Even Boston Coven...”

            “I said this wasn’t to get back to headquarters!” Sette banged the table, and then rubbed her forehead in a gesture of exhaustion.

            Nove made a motion to indicate that she was zipping her lips. She’d heard of this, witches losing their edge.  But Sette? What could it mean?

            As the question skittered across Nove’s mind, Re-tread, her raven and familiar, banged three times, urgently, on his hemlock perch by the chimney.  Nove caught his beady brown eye and read his meaning. Opportunity knocking?

            Even Boston had taken notice of Nove’s successes this summer.  If Sette were really headed for retirement?  I 87 had New York City drivers at its south end and the Adirondacks in the north. Oh, the opportunities for accidents! Oh the freezing rain!  She blew across the top of her cup and pondered.  She didn’t want to leave Vermont, but maybe she wouldn’t have to.  Maybe she was strong enough now… Hadn’t she shown what she could do?

Harriet Gilbert for President

Harriet Gilbert.  I may swoon.

If you are looking for a restful way to occupy yourself in the one air-conditioned room in your house (fellow Vermonters?), I'm here with a couple G-rated suggestions.  Namely, a link to a podcast that I love.

My discovery of the archive of the BBC World Book Club has been the high point of this hot, gremlin-laced week (before coffee this morning my bed and my dryer both broke down).

The host of the show, Harriet Gilbert, is almost too good to be true: a real BBC announcer lady - an archetypal English woman of excellent taste, diamond-cut diction (emailers from around the world send questions and she navigates their names, Bulgarian, Indian, Russian, French, perfectly with never a stumble).   She interviews A-list authors, directs their readings - as in, "read this section now," and corrals the discussions in a way that keeps the show moving along briskly.  Even the audience members are clever and out of the ordinary.

I found the podcast archive while searching for interviews of David Mitchell, most famously the author of Cloud Atlas.  The show was fascinating on many levels (how did he do it? what does it mean?).  As an aside, David Mitchell's lovely voice and manners swept me right off my feet -  lucky that I was lying down while I listened.

Last night, flipping around on my poor (as yet unbroken) bed and fighting insomnia I went back to the World Book Club and listened to Harriet's interviews with P.D. James, A.S. Byatt and Philip Pullman.  I could have picked Annie Proulx, Zadie Smith, an appreciation of Dickens or any of thirty or so other shows.  Of course, I'll be back.

Harriet Gilbert is English, of course, and not a politician. Those are likely barriers that stand between her and the presidency here in the United States, but she would get my vote in a heartbeat.

In other bookish news...

I was gratified during my podcast listening to be interrupted by the little chirp that my iPod uses to tell me I have a new email.  The email in question was to let me know that the Teatime Reader, a book blogger and children's librarian, to whom I had sent my book several months ago, had actually read it, "loved it" (her words) and had reviewed it.  

I know the book isn't for everyone, but I was confident that at least some people would like it and there is nothing more gratifying to me than hearing that someone actually did like it.  Here's the link to the review. 

These things do help one through, as Harriet Gilbert might say.

Land That I Love

Fourth of July Parade, 2013, Moscow, Vt (He's reaching for candy to throw to kids too little to drive a lawnmower)

Hi team.  Just stopping in to say happy Glorious Fourth to all my countrymen.

I have been away in Western New York for a few days catching up, at last, with many of my favorite relatives at the ol' family farm (settled by our crew 60 years ago this year).  Eating potato salad with them in my uncle's garage (repurposed into a kind of church hall for the reunion), general visiting, walking through the woods and fields at the old farm, admiring how beautifully the young people have grown, and how beautifully the older ones have aged, had me feeling pretty good about life in this country already.

Then, this morning I kicked off the Fourth by attending the parade in Moscow, VT, a hamlet within the town of Stowe.  Nothing fancy - the usual fire trucks, a horse who features in every town event, some old cars etc., but also displaying a real sense of humor.

In addition to the lawnmower parade (see above), we got the Moscow Ladies' Lawnchair Brigade (women carrying lawnchairs) and the Moscow Mens' Radio Band (talented wearers of t-shirts printed with the band name and carriers of portable radios).  Someone had been to UPS and printed up a banner announcing that Moscow was offering asylum to Edward Snowden.  The banner was followed by a crowd and I think someone in the group was supposed to represent Snowden - he was trailed by G-men in suits, sunglasses, and earpieces. (I was too slow with my camera phone to get a picture, sorry).

I got quite teary about it as I walked the half mile down the dirt road where I'd had to park my car.  The thing that people often miss about the true greatness of this country is the general decency, the openness, and the kindness of our people.  It shines out at me most at times when no one is trying to make any kind of  a point.  So easy to miss it in all the debate that we seem to go in for and the general braying of the news but as prevalent and real as the air we breathe.  Happy Independence Day!  What a country it is.

Freeeeeeeee!

I heard that little pig in the Geico commercial when I typed that headline.

Anyway dear people, the BOOK is free to download on your Kindle or Kindle App today and tomorrow (June 14 and 15),  So please get yours and tell your friends.  If you like it, feel freeeeeeeeee to write a review on Amazon.  If you don't, well, you can tell me or maybe just keep that to yourself.  (I'm smiling as I write this but inside I am all steel).

Happy Father's Day.

Here's a link to the freebie for my countrymen.

And here's a link for all my friends in Blighty (Amazon.uk).

Thank you all.

Favorite Queen Elizabeth Anecdote and A Little Something for HRH's Birthday

Queen Elizabeth in 1967 - the Famous Admiral's Boat Cloak Portrait by Cecil Beaton

Sometime during the last sixty years, Elizabeth II R was introduced to a famous photographer at some official palace do or another.  (The internet has failed me in trying to track down the photographer involved).  The appropriate introductions were made according the appropriate protocols and the Queen, model of tact that she is, began a polite conversation by noting that she knew a great many photographers.  The photographer in question responded, "And I know a great many Queens."

I like to think that she approved that particular quip.

Anywho, HRH E2R has a birthday coming up next weekend.  It isn't her actual birthday, which is on April 21.  The weather is a little too dodgy then for a parade or trooping the "colour" etc. so they move the party to late May or June. 

This year, it is on June 16.  Have you thought what you might get for HRH?  I am happy to say that, for once, I have planned ahead.

Are you sitting down?

I am offering her Majesty, and everyone else with a Kindle and working knowledge of English, a free download of my book, Up, Back, and Away. 

The giveaway commences at midnight on June 14, 2013 Pacific TIme, and ends midnight June 15.  (With the time delay that covers her big day). 

The book is a time travel adventure story wherein our hero, a fifteen-year-old boy from suburban Dallas, is sent back to England in 1928 (on a vintage English three-speed bicycle) to "find a girl with a gift, a girl born out of her time," and a "secret that was not meant to be" and then return home with them both.

So, if you have a Kindle and the slightest bit of interest wait til next weekend and pounce, or click,  really.  Remember Queen's Birthday = free book.  Queen's Birthday = free book.  Queen's Birthday = free book.  (This is supposed to be like a Manchurian Candidate style trigger for you).

Incidentally, the paperback is on sale now at one third off the cover price so, there ya go.  Also, if you have Amazon Prime you can borrow the book (and other Kindle books) for free anytime.