The sequel to Macbeth - you wouldn't read about it

I have been touring this past month. It's NZ Book Month. Go Book Sellers NZ for their initiative but can I just take someone quietly into the back room and slap them about for bringing demanding readers up to me who want to know: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT and WHEN CAN I GET A COPY OF BIRTHRIGHT and when's the film out?

I slap my head metaphorically but also in private literally.
What happens next? The book is now due out April 2012 and my lips are sealed.
See above. How long is a piece of string?
The story of Fleance, Rosie, Duncan and Rachel is a powerful story. Set in 11th Century Scotland, we meet and come to love four young people who have their hopes, histories, dreams and plans knocked sideways by forces outside their control.

As an author I have to say that I always care about my characters but this story... Well, these guys it's been something else.

I've already killed off a number of characters who I love. And I've cried. More will die because that is the way of life.

But I am a lover of happy endings and I promise you dear reader that at the end of this trilogy you will be happy. Sad, but happy. And satisfied that the right outcome was realised.

I have a confession

I slept in. I did not get out of bed until 10am. I spent the day in my pyjamas almost cracking the cryptic crossword and reading the paper then watching a dvd. This is a huge thing because I am a work-holic! About 2pm, I began to feel really unwell and spent the rest of the day wrapped in blankets lying on the couch referee-ing my daughters and appreciating that the family WAS okay to operate without my hands-on interference.

Two or three or four times a day (daily this past month), I open the file called Birthright first draft . I scroll through what I've done and tinker here and there. But I have no mojo to go into the second half of the second act. I seriously envy writers who, um, write and have no other distractions save the washing or dusting or gardening. The ones who don't have other jobs. The ones who don't have teenagers or small children or needy family members which may or may not include a mash-up of the former groups. The ones who are grounded in healthy habits and solid self-esteem.

Someone made an off-hand comment to me today and it hurt and the person immediately understood that the comment was wrong time wrong place and tried to make amends but, me being tired and mourning real and imagined tragedies, cried for about an hour.

I was heartened by seeing the youtube clip of this song which is one of my current favourites and is No 1 in NZ and then going on to read 'the story' of how they all came to be.

Just now, I have stood in my kitchen listening to one of my children cry about her frustrations that she can not be what she has been and what everyone expects of her and what she wants for herself. She is tired. She misses her boy. She has been working hard. She still does not have 100% health. But she gives gives gives [love love love] to others who have not had the good she's had. It could have been me standing in her shoes.

All I could offer was: it is hard.

Yup. And sometimes it feels like it is harder being a writer than it is being a parent, teacher, waitress, farm labourer, fleeso, cleaner, child, aunt, Head of Department, participator in creating a new school or reviewing the nation's English curriculum.

Being a writer means that the interwoven strands of your thinking, your life, your emotions are pulled out and laid bare on a gravel road for all others to trample over.

Both my children are gifted artists. One has gone down the music road though she is graphically artistic; the other has gone down the art road though she has a sensitive ear for music. Both care about the way the world treats the inhabitants of the world.

Both had still experienced the harshness of living in a fallen world despite our best efforts to protect them. They are great girls and hubby and I love them to bits. That's why I cry when they cry.

I could keep going about where our minds should be with the stuff happening in the other parts of the world....

The one things which comes back to me again and again and helps ground me is this:

I lift eyes to the hills.
Where does my help come from home?
It comes from the maker of heaven and earth....

Go look up the rest but it sums up for me The Windhover of GM Hopkins. Get out there and do what I need to do...

11th C Scotland is currently a more desirable place than the 21st C

the reason why I have stalled

I am trying to kill off a character I adore. This character has to die for the sake of the story but I'm fudging around the chapter and it's holding me up. Tonight, the deed shall be done and I will deal with the aftermath.

Wahhh

The lastest print review of Bloodlines

Second in trilogy excites

Bloodlines by T.K. Roxborogh, Penguin, $40

The Americans can’t figure our whether to put Roxborogh’s trilogy in the adult or young adult section, but it you ask me it should be in both. Anyone gutsy enough to take on a story by Shakespeare deserves credit.

In her second of a three-part series continuing the story of Fleance, son of Macbeth character Banquo, this Kiwi writer has produced a seamless continuation of an enthralling tale.

In Banquo’s Son we followed Fleance’s road to becoming King of Scotland and in Bloodlines he rules a divided nation, battling rebels from within and enemies from outside.

There’s everything here – history, drama, love, war, mystery and intrigue.
This is a damned good story which will leave you drumming your fingers in anticipation of the final in the trilogy.
– Ingrid Tiriana