THE MUSICAL GHOST RETURNS

Last night I stayed a friend who lives with a musical ghost. Part of her beautiful old house dates from the 13^th century and the walls move and the floors undulate when the wind blows. I discovered during my last visit that the ghost comes through the wall of the music room when someone plays the piano. That night, the weather was very wild and windy and I felt I couldn’t play my friend’s beautiful old piano because of the strange atmospheric conditions; it was basically too spooky. So I wandered around the music room before going to bed.

During the night, the wind invaded all the cracks in the old house; leaning on doors, whistling into spaces and banging on windows. My bedroom door kept creaking loudly each time the wind tore through the room, making it impossible to me to sleep. I got out of bed about 3.15 am desperately hoping to stop the noise. I took out my book of Beethoven’s piano sonatas that I had brought with me as it was the only thing that would fit exactly into the space between the door and the door frame and wedged it into the creaking door and climbed back into bed, hoping that the room would be quiet enough for sleep to overtake me. An hour later, just as I was just dozing, the door shot open in the wind and Beethoven’s music dropped to the floor. I was too exhausted to move, so I lay there and knew that a presence was in the room. The musical ghost was standing there waiting for me to play the piano. I was too disturbed to sleep all the night. 

Will I ever have the courage to return?

INDIGO DREAMS PUBLISHING LTD

Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd

I’d like to mention the publishers of my psychological thriller as they are wonderful to authors. Here’s what they wrote about my book and Mary Smith’s.

“A bright cloud in a dark year. Indigo Dreams submitted two books for The People's Book Prize Winter 2012, one for fiction, one for non-fiction. BOTH made it through from a huge list to make the twelve finalists. Next round of voting will be between 21st May - 29th May and we ask for your support then. Huge congrats to Linda M James for The Day of the Swans and to Mary Smith for her tale of Life with Afghan women, Drunk Chickens and Burnt Macaroni.

They beat some big names on the way - here's to IDP and the indie publishers!”

Thank you Indigo Dreams!

 

PEOPLE IN YOUR HEAD

As a small child I thought my Welsh grandmother must have invented people because she knew so much about them. While other people read books: my grandmother read tea-leaves; from these strange marooned squiggles lying at the bottom of tea cups, she seemed to discover more about people’s lives than Charles Dickens ever did from wandering endlessly around the streets of London. When I was ten, I plucked up the courage to ask her how she did it - she told me she was clairvoyant. I was puzzled, wondering why she called herself Clare Voyant when her real name was Sarah Jones. And what did her answer have to do with my question, anyway? I never managed to pluck up the courage to ask her again and even if I had, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity as the adults in my family talked all the time. Welsh children from large families were taught that silence was golden. [Or at least a faded shade of ochre.] At ten, I thought the adults must be making up for hours of enforced childhood silence by talking endlessly.  A gathering of sometimes ten or fifteen animated, loud Welsh voices in a small room forced me into a world of fantasy where I could wander unnoticed for hours. There I created people who I would use years later as an adult.  

All of us have people from the past and present walking around in our heads waiting to written about. I wonder how many people there are in your head?

SEARCHING FOR AMANDA

I had an amazing dream last night where I was meeting all these media people in a surreal car-park full of racks of designer dresses! A man with blonde hair sped into the car park in a yellow Ferrari, stopped next to me and said. ‘You must speak with Amanda Davies.'

The next minute I was sitting in a cafe next to the blonde man and opposite a woman who wouldn’t tell me her name; she seemed important. Eventually she passed me a piece of paper full of  intricate swirling designs in the middle of which was a name: AMANDA DAVIES. ‘I can help you,’ she said. Just as I was about to ask  her ‘How?’ I found myself awake in my bed and wondering what this strange dream meant.

Where are you, Amanda?