"Write what you know" they say.

Even of what you know is benefits advice work and writing stories about it only pays enough to keep your colleagues in biscuits!



Saturday 25 April 2015

Polls Apart

Stoke-on-Trent North
I didn't specifically request a postal vote for next month's General Election or the local election, but we must still be on the list from last time as two envelopes each, each containing two envelopes and a ballot paper, turned up last week and this morning, in a moment of resolution, I completed and posted mine.

In one respect, I can still claim to be a 'life-long Labour voter' as the only local election candidates came from the 'Big Three'.  Nationally, I've voted for the party whose policies most closely reflect my principles and concerns - and that isn't one who think chunky red mugs with slogans on them about controlling immigration are a good idea.

And I've lived up here long enough to wonder where they made those mugs too!

The irony is that as I was typing out the first draft of Severe Discomfort in the grey, wet summer of 2012, I had fond hopes of it helping Labour back into power in 2015 - but I hoped it wouldn't be the same Labour Party that gave us ESA and Local Housing Allowance.  Sadly, it's no better, promising to repeal the Bedroom Tax (because it's unpopular) but not the Benefit Cap (because it's popular), continuing the freeze on Child Benefit, treating 18 to 21 year-olds like children and indulging in an ugly bidding war with the Tories over which party is prepared to let EEA migrant workers starve for longest between jobs.
Southampton Itchen
But I'm not sure I would have been quite as idealistic about my (Green - you guessed?) General Election vote if I still lived in precariously marginal Southampton Itchen. Several of my books' characters would face just that dilemma.  Radical Martin would be torn between following his heart and canvassing for his TUSC candidate, and doing the pragmatic thing to keep the Tory out.  Green Sally Archer might lean towards a LibDem vote to be sure of keeping her Eastleigh constituency out of UKIP hands, and Hilary's hand might hover over her ballot paper again in similar fashion.  Down in Portsmouth North, Tricia can safely follow her conscience - red, redder or green - and will still get blue, one of millions who must feel their vote has no true value.  Still, pity the left-leaning voter pondering their ballot paper where the best way to stop a 'Kipper is to vote Tory - or is voting UKIP the best way to stop a Tory?  Lucky for my crew that they aren't staffing the Medway Welfare Rights Project!

As for Daphne, if she hasn't registered in Stoke Central she'll be moored in a marginal seat where her cross can make the greatest impact.  Sadly, the South Yorkshire Navigation doesn't reach as far as Sheffield Hallam and to get to Wirral West would take Lady Eowyn into risky tidal waters, but Daphne knows the way to Nuneaton or Milton Keynes, Crewe and Nantwich is close to home and Weaver Vale might be very much to her taste, so watch out for a floating voter!



Wednesday 1 April 2015

Now wash your hands!

While the next episode of 'Claimant Commitment' (part 4) slowly takes shape, I've been continuing with marketing plans for 'Grand Union', the unlikely waterways-based thriller with Geordie lass Daphne Randall at the tiller in the company of Potteries hack Harry Biddulph.

Hopefully, I can come up with a plan for a boat-based book launch, as there is now a paperback in addition to the Kindle version - currently only available via CompletelyNovel,  but hopefully soon to be on general release.  In anticipation of this, I ordered a small batch of books last month, only to realise when they arrived that, while I had amended the manuscript for the printers to correct the last few typos (hopefully...) and iron out some page-numbering glitches, I had failed to upload these changes to CompletelyNovel's system, so the books came out with the errors still in.

Not wishing to hand out 'seconds' to people I hope to impress, and wary of inflicting yet more of my dodgy books on my long-suffering friends, I am disposing of a handful of these in a manner even their harshest critics might feel is a little too cruel: they are being abandoned in lavatories!
Actually, it's not quite as grim as it sounds, since the loos in question are actually the Canal and River Trust sanitary stations to be found alongside the canal network, many of which have an additional function as boaters' libraries.  Boaters drop off books they have finished reading, sometimes exchanging them for another that catches their eye. This isn't a book-borrowing arrangement likely to appeal to anyone who is a bit 'OCD' about hand-washing and hygiene, but appears to work well nonetheless and there is usually an interesting variety to chose from.  One copy of 'Grand Union' was exchanged for Jennifer Worth's fascinating Call the Midwife (on which the Sunday evening TV show was based), an extraordinary piece of compassionate but unsentimental social history that Mr H read from cover to cover in a couple of days and I have now prized away from him to read myself, so thanks to whoever left that at Gailey Wharf. 

I would be curious to know where the books end up and how they migrate about the system - I'm making a note in the front cover of where they are first left, and though it is possible that one or two might become permanent fixtures of a boater's bookshelf, I rather hope they'll roam about.  I've had a cheery message on Facebook from the finder of one volume, which was very thoughtful; I hope Daphne has made a new friend, but whether she has or not, there may be a copy for collection somewhere along the Shroppie in due course.  All being well, none of the books will actually end up being used in lieu of loo paper!

I've still got a couple to release - one at least should find a home somewhere on the BCN, and perhaps Fradley Junction for the last, as it lies along the route of Daphne's first adventure.  I've been doodling notes for more stories, so Daph will definitely be back one day - battling up the Wolverhampton 21 in a raging gale, perhaps, though with whom and to investigate what remains to be seen.


Kindle users can find the story here: www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-Union-Sarah-Honeysett-ebook/dp/B00T3CG5KU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8