Breathing is Free

My blog tells me that quite a large number of you read and liked the Coleridge poem 'To Nature'.  It was plants that opened the door to life on earth for us.  I'm told that they have been around for some 460 million years.  If we are damaging our planet with the use of fossil fuels (and the current winter we are suffering is suggesting that perhaps we are), when did we start?  Relative to the plants, we have been on earth for a very short time.  With the hole in the ozone layer that we have, I felt it would help to know when and why we started to disrespect the life-giving plants of our planet.  The Promise Tree, Books One & Two, attempts, through the course of a fictional story, to pinpoint the 'when' and 'why', and possible 'who'.  But never mind the 'who': let's face it, the deserts of our planet do not make the air that we breathe.

At the moment breathing is free.  But will it stay that way?

See in the Light

On Christmas Eve, in chapter 8, Edwina walks to church to attend the candlelit service.  On her way she sees hosts of tiny white moths drawn to the streetlights.  There are many levels of meaning in Book One of The Promise Tree and it is true that if one wishes to see in the light one must walk in the shadows.  We are now signing off from the blog until after Christmas and will be with you again in the New Year.  We wish you and all our readers a very happy holiday.

Penance

"So why a penance?"
"It was a Christian city.  On the 12th April 1204, the Crusaders, together with a huge army of knights from the Latin countries, attacked Constantinople and defeated it.  The inhabitants were slaughtered and the city was pillaged and the relics of the Eastern Christian Church, worth more than their weight in gold so it is said, were brought back to the West."

So what did this have to do with Friday the 13th?

Christmas Party

A very content and smiling Jennifer was carried back down to the warmth of the party, placed very carefully on the dance floor and even more carefully released, keeping the petals of her skirts in place.  Charles then folded her in his arms and danced with her as he looked for Dani.

Her head on his shoulder, she was dancing with their celebrity guest.  Charles caught her eye and raised his.  Dani smiled in recognition.  She had guessed right and had asked Charles to invite Jennifer.  More gently, had been her instructions to him.

A half hour later, as the couples passed, Dani slid into Charles' arms, slipping Jennifer neatly into her partner's.  Only then, for Charles, did the penny drop.

Christmas Eve

As the first silvery pencils of light had touched the icicles that hung along the Friary wall, he had been walking up Little Street watching the wind blow the rooks about the sky.  Christmas Eve: he loved this day.  Child and man.

Spices of the Orient

By six o'clock the restaurant smelt enticingly of spices of the Orient and Christmas tree.  A log fire crackled in the grand fireplace, hung with holly and ivy.  Roxy, the headwaiter, who had been testing the mulled wine, whisked about the dining-room in an elf's costume, throwing his arms around the temp. girl, Edwina, and shouting 'You shall have a Christmas, Tiny Tim.'

A story for those who care

What is the connection between the arc of the covenant, the beautiful cedars of Lebanon which once grew all around the shores of the Mediterranean, a children's nursery rhyme and the giant figure cut into the chalk hills of the South Downs of England?  If you don't know, find out!  Look for yourself.  Google The Long Man of Wilmington and wonder who created him.

My story takes us through the mind and imaginative wanderings of a young female photojournalist.  In Book One a seemingly disconnected series of events in her life and mind lead her on, drawing her in, as if dangling on the end of a spider's thread.  Inexorably she is pulled toward the centre of the web, to face the ungodly.  By the middle of Book Two she has realised, but can she stop?

Her travels are occasionally bawdy, occasionally funny, well written and romantic.  The majority of the locations in the story are real and the innumerable pieces of history used are, if our history books can be believed, also real.

The Promise Tree Book One is a pleasant read and the electronic book makes an ideal and convenient Christmas present.

The majority of the posts on this blog are short extracts from The Promise Tree Book One.

Enjoy.