Elin Gregory

I’ve made a couple more Torch Relay posts: Aberdeen to Dundee here and Edinburgh to Alnwick here

Part of the fun is supposed to be adding excerpts and links to published or soon to be published stories set in the areas we write about. Since I don’t have any of those, though I have plenty of WIPs I’m posting the beginning of my story A Fierce Reaping.

Cynfal, doubly bereft and down on his luck, heads north to join the war band of King Marro of Din Eidin. First impressions count so he sets about making one.

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I’m deep in edits of my novel set in the early 18th century and keep coming across the same problem. I look up a term or a word to see if it’s reasonable for a character to use it and discover that either it didn’t exist or that it has replaced an earlier similar term with just enough difference to look odd.

For instance today I wanted my 1718 protagonist to describe someone as a ‘cat’s paw’. A quick check with Etymonline proved that cat’s paw didn’t appear in print until 1790 and it may not have been used at all in 1718. Instead my protagonist, Kit, would say ‘cat’s foot’ – which just looks wierd.

I consulted the oracle [Erastes :)] and have used cat’s paw in the interests of clarity. What would you do? What do you do? Which is better? Accuracy at all costs or an easier experience on the reader?

I can’t NOT share this, because it’s just crazy good fun.

What do you get when you cover a 30ft obelisk in lard and make a load of sailors climb up it?

Apparently it’s an annual event.

Filling a last minute gap in the schedule today with info and pics about the Isle of Man. I had a camping  holiday there when I was a kid. Never been so wet in all my life!

If you’ve ever wondered what a dimple rumpy is click on the picture to find out.

Here we go again – Six Sentence Sunday! The usual thing – register with the site then on Sunday post just six sentences from a published work or WIP. Links on the site will allow you to go whizzing around the world reading other people’s sentences. It’s a lot of fun.

Here are mine – again I’m using my WIP “A Fierce Reaping” based on the 6th century AD poem Y Gododdin.  Introducing another character here who will become more important to Cynfal as time goes by:

The harper he had noticed earlier, crouched at Marro’s feet, was not a boy, as Cynfal had thought but a man grown, though the boniness of his wrists suggested that he was still young.  Dark hair swung forward to shadow his face, a close cropped beard shadowed his jaw, but the clear grey eyes, rimmed with black, were on Aneurin, watching for cues, and the thin lips moved, shaping the words silently. It was an austere face, with prominent but beautiful bones – the face of a fanatic, or a saint, or of a young man who had been desperately ill.
“Who’s that?” Cynfal whispered, nudging Aeddan.
Aeddan leaned and looked then made white eyes like a frightened horse. “That’s Gwion, Cynon’s young cousin – a man to avoid.”

Today is my first bit of the torch relay blogging – the rest of the posts may be found here!

We are supposed to add a bit of a story about the area we have been allocated, something that has either been published or is about to be published. As a very new author I can’t do that  but I can post a bit of one of my many WIPs here and link to it.

So here’s my offering. This is a section of a very long story about a place between places where the old influences the new and sometimes seeps through into the present day but this part is about loneliness and community. It’s a winter story to cool us down on what is promising to be a very hot day.

February Fill-ditch

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