The floods have completely ruined farmland, cottages and stone walls in Langthwaite, Reeth, Fremington and Grinton
Everyone has been rallying round to help and local businesses are working hard to re-open but it will be a long time before things are fully back to normal.The bridge on the road from Grinton to Leyburn has collapsed and the alternative road from Richmond has suffered a landslide, making access to the villages more difficult but hopefully this will not discourage visitors coming to our beautiful part of the dales.
Editing is the final, and very important, stage before publication of my novels
I have just finished my first edit and disentangled a few loose threads. It is inevitable that there will be the odd occasion when continuity goes awry; for example where someone travels by car to a location then travels back by bike. However, strangely, in this book it seems that DS Nina Featherstone is getting quite forgetful and I have had to remove occasions when she has repeated herself, picked up an item belonging to the victim but never mentioned it again or had to rush off to see...
The Stripey Badger Bookshop is a lovely independent bookshop, with a tea room attached, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales
I was delighted that this village bookshop is stocking my Yorkshire Dales Mystery Series. The Stripey Badger is a family business owned by Linda Furniss and her son James Firth, while his aunt owns the Stripey Badger Coffee Shop and Kitchen next door. Customers can wander between the two, indulging in coffee and cake while perusing the shelves. There is a fantastic selection of books and I was able to pick up Milkman by Anna Burns and Circe by Madeline Miller [both shortlisted for the...
The Public Lending Right Act 1979 gave British authors a legal right to receive payment for the free lending of their books by public libraries
Under the Act funding is provided by Central Government and payments are made to eligible authors in accordance with how often their books are lent out from a selected sample of UK public libraries. The UK Public Lending Right office is part of the British Library. The British Library receives funding for PLR from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. For the current spending review period PLR funding amounts to £6.6 million per year. To qualify for payment authors must apply...
This year burning of the heather on the moors in Swaledale has started early
For the last 200 years gamekeepers have burnt long narrow strips of mature heather on a rotation. By creating a patchwork of different aged heathers a gamekeeper knows he will always have some young heather for grouse to feed on that is nutritionally richer and more digestible. There has been considerable research on the effects of such activities and the impact that poorly controlled fires can have on the peat substrate. However, my interest in the photograph is because I am...