More Stories from my window

Stories from my window
Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta

Washing up in Malta is about travel, coming of age, mothers and daughters.  The lives of two women, Jessica and Grace, unfold across a century of change.  Their particular journeys take them through Scotland, England, Germany, Africa, Bahamas and Australia.  Through it all, the place that punctuates their lives as a marker of home is the tiny island of Malta, at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea.   Grace begins her journey here and Jessica completes the circle by returning to Malta towards the end of her life.  In between, Grace and Jessica hear different drums.  Their lives share common rights of passage and the love of one man, but they each have their own way of dealing with the challenges of their times.  Just as Malta struggles to find a path towards independence, Jessica and Grace also find their own way through the competing demands of the world around them.

This is the text that appears on the back cover of Washing up in Malta.  The view at the top was taken on Boxing day but the same view with a different mood and time of day appears on the back cover as well.  Place is important in my writing and in the way I live.  Here is a quote from the linking strand of the book which uses my experiences of renovating my flat in Valletta.  This text started life as a poem that I posted a year or more ago on this blog.

From my window, the twin breakwaters of Grand Harbour embrace me like the arms of a final lover.  I feel the pulse of Valletta snuggled at my back, breathing softly in my ear.  He speaks to me, this city built by gentlemen for gentlemen, this city of straight, masculine lines and defensive bastions, this city of baroque excess.

I am part of the softer, rounded shapes of the goddess temples, more ancient than the knights' city, trampled by the knights' religion, reborn in Valletta chapels as virgin mother and martyred saint.

Yet his soft breathing enchants me and his encircling arms merge with my own arms.  Red and green candles flicker in my hands guiding ships to the safe harbour that has become my own haven.

I woke this morning before dawn and watched the lights on the harbour walls winking as a small cargo ship left port.  The wind is rising and white caps are forming outside the walls.  On the horizon to the East, the lights of oil tankers moored on Hurd bank are lined up like an invading fleet.  The reason they are there is never quite explained - they are waiting for wold oil prices to rise; they are undertaking some chemical cleansing process that leaves a toxic sludge; they are waiting to unload their cargo.

Washing up in Malta - the story continues

One of my resolutions for January which I may or may not renew each month through 2013 is to post at least one blog each month.  2012 has overwhelmed my blog.  My first book, Washing up in Malta, came out and I traveled a lot and I started working on the second book.

Another resolution for January is to write 500 words a day on the next book.  I have managed to do that since I returned to Malta in October and I am almost at the end of the first draft but have bogged down so have decided to leave it for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year.  When I return from a week's trip to Djerba in Tunisia I'll get going again.

I'm learning a lot, probably the hard way, about publication.  From idea to book in hand, Washing up in Malta took me longer than my PhD, at least ten years.  The idea emerged when I recorded some of my mother's stories before she died but the shaping of the story waited until after I finished my day job in 2008 when I set up this blog and started practicing the craft of writing.  Many drafts later and I had a manuscript to send off to publishers at the start of this year.

I was rejected by silence or by polite letters of praise with the inevitable 'However'.  It seemed that I had left my run too late and was doomed to the bitterness of the scorned writer or years of pouring my energy into pursuit of a publisher.  I didn't like that idea and with my 8th decade looming on the horizon, I don't have a lot of time to wallow.  There are at least two more book ideas in my head and I wanted to get going.  I decided to publish through authorhouse.uk.  It's called author assisted publication.

I felt very worried at first.  When you're on a fixed income, the bright young things on the other end of the phone were asking for a lot of money.  I was relying only on my own judgement about the quality of the work.  I resisted the hard sell to double the cost and have what seemed to be just a line edit.  I took photos for the cover, more photos to go inside behind the poems I wanted included at the start of sections, and did a final rework on the manuscript.  It was a scramble to get it all off before departing on the first leg of my round-the-world trip.

The process was fast.  As I traveled, I was passed on from one publishing section to another and had the support of different groups of relatives as I went.  My sister in California helped me negotiate proof changes and cover design alterations.  My cousins in New Zealand and Australia encouraged me with interest.  In Brisbane, I held the first hard copies in my hand.  It felt good.

Much of the rest of my stay in Queensland was about letting go of Washing up in Malta and doing research for the second book, Songs for a Blind Date.  That is one of the threads I am writing into "Songs".  But the last phase of marketing a book is particularly hard when you have self-published.  I am resisting the hard sell of putting out more money to get Washing up in Malta noticed by a wider reading public.  I feel uneasy about the thought that my book might be read simply because I have put out a lot of money to have it come up at the top of electronic search engines or get featured at book fairs.  So Washing up in Malta will remain in my life for a while longer as I find ways to personalise the selling of the book through book readings and identification of particular readerships such as travelers and the Maltese diaspora.

In my next post, I'll say something about what Washing up in Malta is about.  In the meantime you can find it on Amazon.com, Amazon.com.uk, authorhouse.co.uk or on my Facebook page under Josephine Burden

Morning at Shorncliffe

Fog over the creek as we set off

The crane...

and the fisherman

Below the cliff

Ruby explores...

and leads the way...

...home to a bit of light reading

Washing up in Malta

Almost a year gone by and I have neglected my blog.  But I have been writing and publishing my book Washing up in Malta https://www.facebook.com/pages/Josephine-Burden/487711101240108

I've also been traveling for three months and have lots of photos to post.  But I just have to work out the new format on this site before I get back into it!  I'm also working on my next book.

Walking the Cottonera - Images

The start of a new year and my first post for 2012. This is also the first post from my new iMac. I have worked out how to get photos into the machine, now I will experiment with getting them onto this page!

Titles for my first four offerings:

1. A man and his dog on the road to Rinella

2. Evening light over Kalkara

3. In the Birgu ditch

4. On the road to Kalkara

I'll put up another post with text soon