As well as sowing seeds, there are a couple of writing projects that are waiting in weeks for different points of this year. All being well, these will available in March/April and then in December. There is a cook book pencilled for somewhere in the middle!
‘Retreating to Peace’ sees me work alongside a smashing group of indie authors on the Peace Series. You can find details here about the authors involved.
August 17th 2016 was a rather important milestone. It was one year exactly since I pressed publish and published ‘Playing with Plant Pots: Tales from the allotment’. This is the first of two books, and was the start of an interesting adventure.
#Plantpottales was the product of fevered writing, and a deep rooted desire to share what I have experienced whilst having an allotment. Based upon this blog, the book extends to some extend some of the learning that is documented in these cyber-pages. I didn’t write it to replace, but as an accompaniment. It is an additional source of information, that can be accessed and used.
I wanted to write a book, it seemed a challenge and a good thing to do! It call came from guest blogging, and with encouragement that is the legend https://mrplantgeek.com/ He is also the chap who indirectly helped create the #bollywoodgardener. Without his encouragement, I don’t think the book light bulb would have switched on. It was not easy to write the book, I had a list of ideas and wanted pictures. Throwing together is probably a better description, as I remember having all sorts running through my head.
There was distinct movement from being an allotment garden blogger to an indie author. I had never in the first instance, termed myself an garden blogger-yet this was another lovely group that I have found!-but it did make sense to me; I am blogging about a garden, it just happens to be an allotment garden. This is a dynamic linear development, I am still a garden blogger and I happen to now be an indie author. I self published, don’t have an agent, a publisher; I am also still learning about the process.
Didn’t stop me from writing a second book.
There is a fantastic indie community, and if you are on FB, you can find their page here. Indie Authors and Book Bloggers They also have a website, http://indieauthorsandbookblogs.weebly.com/ where you can find information about this fantastic community. They have an affiliate magazine, that I just happen to be in this month http://pub.lucidpress.com/b9f1a33c-1afa-4708-b466-3811378f474a/?src=fb
There is also a cracking good garden bloggers community, that started via the twitterverse https://twitter.com/gdnbloggers and they have also been immensely supportive. There is also the gdbbloggers website where you can find further details.
To me, having self published two books is an achievement. It is something that I am very proud of, and want to share with anyone who will listen! I appreciate that not everyone is green fingered, not everyone wants to know about garlic and chilies; yet you never know. There was just something about holding a book with my name on, and knowing that I wrote it.
I remember walking passed a bookshelf in a well known book store, it was headed ‘Gardening’. To me that felt like a set of goal posts, and the thought in my head was that one day, I might get there.
It is however important in my head to keep a few things straight. In the first instance, I have written about a very niche interest. Gardening and cooking isn’t necessarily everyone’s cuppa tea. So that means that interest in the books might not equal or plumb the depths that heavyweight Gods and Goddesses of Horticulture. Second, Rome wasn’t built in a day-I have been there, I know-and writing is a process. Neither of the books is perfect, but I have given them my all, I will continue to do so.
There are further books to be written, I know there are. I am half way-ish writing book three; there have been struggles with that, I can tell you! At the moment, Book four has a cover image but no content, and that is likely to be a gardening book. Book three, is definitely not gardening and is something of an experimental work in progress.
I have enjoyed this journey so far, and I do hope that it will continue. And the key word is hope. Hope, as you never know.
Just to let you know, that for the duration of the growing season-til October-ebook/kindle versons of both #Plantpottales and #SowGrowEat are reduced in price.
‘Playing with Plant Pots’ is now priced at £1.99. You can find the link on the side or click here.
‘Sow, Grow and Eat’ is now priced at £2.00. The link is also on the side or click here.
The paperback versions remain the same if ordered via amazon.
You can however obtain paper copies from me at a reduced priced(whilst stocks last) via PayPal.
Sow grow eat is priced at £8 plus £2 P+P
Plant pot tales is priced at £6 plus £2 P+P
Simply get in touch via Social media-twitter, instagram, FB or drop me a line via email: pfarmah AT hotmail DOT com. -Enter the email manually, as I don’t like spambots and you don’t want them either!
If you ask my Mum, the tomatoes have been looking routinely quite sad. They needed watering, and they were cheered up with doses of haitch two oh as and when required. What was more important, was sunshine. Sunshine, which has been somewhat absent and has finally turned up. And very welcome it is too, as it has kick started and renewed feelings of optimism as far as the allotment is concerned. According to the weather people, the sunshine is going to be around for a while; a week at least. With that in mind, the tomatoes have been sent outside to the path in Dad’s garden to start the process of hardening off. Unlike last year, where the tomatoes were all grown under cover; these are going to be outdoors and in raised beds or open ground. Currently they are all having a strop in pots, and I am hoping that if the plants sun bathe for the next few days that I can then take them to the allotment and bury them a bit deeper. The appearance of yellow flashes, tomato flowers, suggests that these all need to get a wiggle on and fairly soon.
This year’s cohort of chillies are the current room mates of the tomatoes, and will also need to be removed to the poly tunnel and be potted up. There are chillies here that are supposed to be small and stumpy, as it were, and those who are supposed to grow tall and abundant. I did sort them out into two groups to make the sorting out easier. The taller chillies will be potted up into large flower buckets, whereas the smaller ones are going to put into pots as they are not expected to take up a huge amount of room. In the last few weeks, the chillies have rather had something of a grow spurt and on time. In the next four weeks they will grow further before being moved to the poly tunnel. Having been sown a little late doesn’t appear to have to knocked them too much.
With the chillies hitting a stride, there are also emerging seedlings. Recently sown cucumbers and squashes have started to come through. With the frost window remaining open until the next May bank holiday, both of these have got four weeks to grow and become more robust. In my experience, squashes grow very quickly; you sometimes have to re-pot them to key up. I am hoping that with the four week window they are suitably sized for planting out once that they have been hardened off. With the cucumbers, I do intend for these to be planted and grown outside. I have previously grown crystal lemon outside and harvested a crop.
Seedlings are sat on the sidelines, mean making crumble. Last year I was able to harvest trugs full of apples and these were then frozen alongside some plums. Today has been spent making a plum and apple crumble. The second in four days!
With the crop of a previous year being used up, we can look to the future crop. A walk to the plot meant finding cherry and apple Blossom. The two cherry trees, Sylvia and Morello, are new additions to the plot; so it was rather heartening to see white buds n the Morello, but a lovely white bloom-just the one!-on the Sylvia tree. I wasn’t expecting to see any blossom on them this year, so I am really quite surprised to see blossom. I did check on the Concorde pear, that appears to have taken the frost on the chin, and is still looking frilly. The darling peach tree does still have a couple of deep pink blooms, there had been half a dozen; I did fleece at one point only for the wind to disagree with the shrouding.
The otherwise heavy clay of the allotment has had a chance to dry out. This has been to the relief to the heritage garlic that Marshalls were kind enough to provide for the plot. Garlic is wonderfully resilient, and is actually doing quite well given how much rain it has suffered. There are no signs yet of any bolting, and the ground is weed free so the bulbs should be making the most of the nutrients available from the clay. The foliage is still very green and leafy, and with another eight weeks to go there is still a lot of growing to be done.
I do like it when the post person delivers something that you’ve been hotly anticipating. Copies of ‘Sow Grow and Eat’ landed on our doormat and rather made my day. My thanks to the fabulous Howard-(the artist who once sunk spuds, remember him?) for having put the cover together. You will also spot that the Loldeantimber trug is now something of a cover star, it also appears in the book. Given how the trug is used so much on the plot, it was definitely going to end up in the book.
Tomorrow the kindle promo kicks off with Playing with plant pot tales being at reduced price. This will subsequently be followed by sow grow and eat.
Alongside this, there is an event on the Facebook page. So if you picked up a copy, why not join the event and share your experiences; may be even like, share and comment on the page to help others hear about allotment adventures.
You can find links to both books and their paperback equivalents, right here on the blog. (Right hand side —–>)
From the 3oth of April until the 7th May there will be a kindle promotion for both of the books. So be sure to get your copies whilst the prices have been dropped! Promotion does only apply to the UK sites.
Prices correct at time of publishing and will be changing back when promotion ends. Promotions end at GMT. Details will be public as soon as promotions start.
Playing with Plant pots: Promotional price £1.99 30th April-7th May 2016
Sow, Grow and Eat: Promotional price £0.99 5th May-12th May 2016
Don’t miss out!
sowgroweat Cover for paperback
Both copies of the second book are now online and available to buy. You can click on the images on the right hand side to get yourself a copy.
After much brain-bending and feverish writing, the follow up to #Plantpottales will soon arrive.
This is the ebook cover, just to give you a taster. Please watch this space for it all to go live.
I hear it’s World Book Day tomorrow; the global celebration of literary fiction, of characters that inveigle themselves into our imagine to loom larger than life, and of the passion and pride that authors feel when their words are read and enjoyed.
Admittedly, these were my second. third and fourth thoughts after thinking of my own book and how I could plug it all day tomorrow. Not the most appropriate thought I suppose when there are books for every taste and interest that should be celebrated. I wrote mine as it corresponds to mine, the fortunate thing being that there are people out there for whom I hope it is useful. I enjoy having a vegetable patch, and I wanted to share the lessons learned from it.
It is less than seven months since I published #Plantpottales, and I am trying to think of what to do next. There is a current work in progress, with slow and steady progress being made. I do have a self imposed deadline that I am working towards; and two months in it is feeling rather tight already. I don’t write full time, I don’t even play on the plot full time; so it is shoe horned into the real life. This makes having a monthly quota a challenge, and I have a long list of things I want to write and put into the work. It’s a move away from non-fiction; I am trying to use my imagination and a thesaurus to create a work of fiction.
But I would also like to write another non-fiction gardening book. The thought has entered my mind of late. It will have recipes in it, certainly. I have a list! Of the assorted jams, jellies and chutneys that have been plot experiments. (I’m going to be cautious here and tell you that I am not a professional preserver but a hobbyist, so don’t be expecting full scale rules and regulations for health and safety et cetra. Keep yourself and your kitchen safe, all right?). Whilst I have the list of recipes, I will need to reflect on what I put in the book proper. This means devising a list of chapter headings in the same way I did when developing #plantpottales. Some serious reflection is required as to what I want to put into it; knowing what I had put into #plantpottales.
This is the first-I think-World Book Day that I can experience as an author. I might be self published, but an author nonetheless, and I like to think that #plantpottales is one of the many books out there that will be appreciated not just tomorrow, but also beyond. The growing season has but just started!
With two possible, projects for the coming year, I can only hypothesis what world book day 2017 might be like.
Having set myself a mission of writing and publishing something by the end of the year; I am trying. I am really trying!
I have learned lessons from last year, having written and published #plantpottales. I enjoyed it immensely and I am very proud of having written and published a book that I feel really passionately about. #Plantpottales is really special to me, I enjoyed writing it and I feel it is of value to other people. That was one driving factor in writing it, as well as wanting to share all of my experiences so that others could benefit from them. The process at the time was exciting. I remember a number of times where writing was frenzied, I just had to write things down and get them into the book. I cannot really describe the buoyancy that came in setting my mind on the task and actually feeling inspired. Feeling inspired was pretty encouraging, and actually gave me a lot of confidence to get the job done. To stay focused and put effort into the project.
#Plantpottales was of course non-fiction, and something that reflected my own personal experiences. And now I am considering fiction. This somewhat perturbs me. Whilst I have been part of a Star Trek fan fiction sim and for a while, this is different. I would be writing something by myself and it won’t have anything to do with Star Trek! (I don’t think I ever written about gardening in the sim, actually….) I have found myself asking questions about how exactly I am supposed to do this. Searching questions as to what is it that makes a book readable, what are the technical things that I need to consider in terms of plot devices and how to write dialogue. I might, of course, be thinking about things a bit too much. When all I should be doing is sitting down and just writing what might find itself arriving into my head. These things are important, and I am by no means glossing over them. My attention will be given to them in due course.
Reflection has happened, and whilst I was thinking about what type of writer I am. I may have got a little hung up, on thinking that I have to plan, and in detail. I don’t particularly like planning to the n’th degree. I would much rather have a daydream of a sort, hold onto that and put pen to paper. Pretty much what has been described as writing ‘by the seat of your pants’. I can see the logic in that; that feels like the way I write at the moment. That is the way I am going to keep it. I enjoy it, the experience of having a daydream that feels like a story waiting to happen inspires and encourages me to keep writing. I do like to write with a pen and paper too. I can’t edit and go back to text as you might with a PC or a lap top, but I like it. It’s the experience of seeing something you have imagined in your mind, take form on a page in ink. Though trying to read my writing when I go to type does make for a challenge. The ideas are easier to execute with a pen, paper, and with post-its that I can stick in when I have an idea.
Once #plantpottales was done and dusted, there was a physical and psychological drain and it left a wound. I wasn’t inspired, and I found it very hard to imagine things. Images and ideas would form, only to go zing and poof; disappear without cogency. I couldn’t feel ideas form that I wanted to believe in and share. I wanted to, I wanted to write again. Only when your body and brain are telling you ‘no’ it is probably a good idea to just wait. And I did wait for a bit, even though it has been rather frustrating. I had a couple of ideas that attempted to materialise, the one idea I wrote the opening salvos of and then left aside until Christmas.
The plan was to write two things simultaneously over the course of the year. It still is, actually; with one project under way and the second not yet presenting itself in an inspired way. Both are still in the infancy, so I won’t at this stage give away details. Only that one could/might still be gardening orientated, and that the second is not really that cute, fluffy, all smiles and whistles. The second has my attention for now; there are ideas and half a plan. I know, I said that I don’t like to plan. I didn’t actually formulate the plan; the plan came together by itself. Came together from having written a list of scenes to right, and presented me the opportunity to plot them onto a timeline. I sat there, and I looked at it. Realised that I had now a plan of what I wanted to write. That I write in stages; that like Lego blocks would come together in some sort of structure. It has taken time to get this far. Time to consider things carefully. More so than last year with #plantpottales. I can’t help but feel that there is a reason for that; and part of the learning and development process. The two projects are different and the first of the two is at this stage best described as an engine that has stalled and may even have slightly dodgy spark plugs. I cannot seem to piece any ideas together that might actually work.
What I don’t like is word counts and deadlines. In terms of word counts, the prospect of writing 80, 000 words terrifies me. That is a lot of words. #Plantpottales was a fraction of that at 25, 000. So I do see that as a Psychological barrier of a sort. Then I think about how quickly I did actually amass those words, and how when writing the blog, I don’t necessarily reflect on how many words a post might be. Knowing the word count for #plantpottales is something of a yardstick for how many words I need to write over the coming year. Deadlines. An end point is always useful, to start a journey and then plot your course towards the end. I did give myself a deadline for #plantpottales and ended up publishing well before. This time, I want to use time more effectively. I want to make it worthwhile. I don’t expect to be writing for hours at all hours. First of all, real life gets in the way and second there are those days when you feel as inspired as a dead gnat.
I will continue to write. I want to, and I do feel that #plantpottales is something of a beginning. Writing is not easy, I don’t believe that for a moment. I will try to do it though. I really will.
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“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
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