Catherine Feeny's Blog

Flower Girl, my latest novel, will be free to download on Amazon Kindle on Friday December 13th & Saturday December 14th 2013. I hope that readers will take advantage of this special offer, and use it as a chance to get to know my writing.

I recently watched a documentary about the travels of D.H. Lawrence, at the end of which it was stated that he is not much studied at an academic level nowadays, because he is judged politically incorrect.

I have read Women in Love and Sons and Lovers, though not recently, so I am not in a position to comment on his attitudes. However, I do know that he is one of the great British writers, and I worry deeply about the idea that he, or anyone else, should be cast into obscurity because their views do not chime with modern thinking.

Of course there are writers, from the past and in our current era, with whose ideas we might not agree, but to stop reading them because of that is either to bury our heads in the sand or to bring anachronistic attitudes to the reading of a work. In short, it is a deeply unintellectual approach.

Consider just a few of the writers we would be forced to eschew if political correctness was our only consideration: Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Trollope, Yeats, Pound etc etc.

Intelligent people know what they think, what they believe, and what they disagree with, so let us go on reading the greats, including Lawrence. They are too valuable a human resource to be overlooked.

While reading Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now the other day, I came across a character eating a "merrythought". I looked it up and it turns out to be an earlier name for a wishbone. Apparently the term "wishbone" came into being in the US in the 1850s and gradually supplanted the earlier term, though not in both countries until after 1900. The merrythought was pulled, like the wishbone, but instead of getting a wish, the one with the longer piece could expect to marry first, this being the merry thought that it gave one.

The character eating the merrythought is a young country lass, who is about to refuse a proposal of marriage from an honest miller because she has fallen for the charms of a handsome, ruthless aristocrat. The irony would, of course, have been immediately obvious to a Victorian reader.

From now on I am going to pull merrythoughts.

It was good to be back on Siren FM this week. Much more relaxed, now that I know the format and have met the great team. The main topic was Lincoln Inspired, the city's arts festival, which is next due to happen in late spring 2014. Its organisers are currently involved in raising funds. I am looking forward to attending their literary quiz in December, though I suspect I won't do too well, as I must confess I haven't read any Harry Potter books, and there will surely be questions on them. Still, it is all in a good cause, and I am pleased to have been asked to take part in the festival.

This coming week sees the penultimate class in the Creative Writing course I am teaching for Writing East Midlands. I will be so sorry when it is over, as the students are a great bunch, and all very promising writers. I greatly hope we will keep in touch.

Last week I was asked along to Siren FM, a local community radio station to talk about Flower Girl (& much else besides)! It was a great experience, not least because I met the team and they are fantastic people, who I hope will become friends. Bumped into some of them again at The Lincoln Sausage Festival yesterday - yes, it was a day of utter gustatory bliss! And they have invited me to be on again this coming week. Listen in on Thursday at 9 a.m.

Friday & Saturday were an exhausting but very exciting couple of days. Flower Girl was free on Amazon Kindle and I was trying to get the word around about it. In fact, I did so many Tweets that I now feel as if I should be roosting in a tree! In the end the response was very positive. Now I am hoping that everybody who dowloaded Flower Girl will enjoy reading it!

Whisper it: I am becoming more computer literate! And it is great to see all the resources out there to link writers with readers. Busy preparing for Friday and Saturday (October 18th and 19th) when Flower Girl will be available to download FREE from Amazon Kindle:
http://amzn.to/19IN56C

I am nearing the end of Mary Doria Russell's novel Children of God, and there is one thing I can guarantee: I will be disturbed in some way while reading the last page. I know that because it happens EVERY time I get to that stage in a book. Does anybody else have this experience? If so, can they recommend a way of avoiding it (other than locking oneself in the bathroom)?

It is hard to think of anything more unedifying than the British party conference season. But for those, like myself, in danger of succumbing to utter despair, there is an antidote: The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope. Just change the costumes, and you have got exactly what we have been witnessing over the past few weeks. And, Right Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen, long before you were even thought of, he had sussed the lot of you!

Many writers use their immediate surroundings as a setting. I find that I rarely write about anywhere until I have left it. Maybe I need a sense of distance to get a feeling for what stands out about a place. I wrote the first third of Flower Girl in Normandy, and the rest in Shetland, but I could see the colours of the United States - the clear light of California; the deep greens of the wooded mountains etc - as I sat at my desk looking out on a very different landscape.