Portmeirion

We helped our friend move his belongings to North Wales this past weekend as he is about to start work with the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway As we were lucky enough to enjoy some lovely early autumn sunshine whilst there, we took the opportunity to spend the afternoon visiting Portmeirion, which is located right on his new doorstep.

No Parking Sign near entrance to Portmeirion

To many, Portmeirion's celebrity comes from it serving as the location for the 1960s television show The Prisoner. This show soon became a cult favourite and brought the fear that the village might be spoiled by the inundation of tourists. To help avert this, the owner, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis introduced a levy in the form of an entrance free to Portmeirion.

Entering Portmeirion

One of the strange statues that adorn Portmeirion ~
what is that in the creature's paws?

The unique character and striking appearance of Portmeirion was designed by Williams to assauge his love for Italian architecture. He constructed the village between 1925 and 1975.

Portmeirion is now a charitable trust, making an income by renting self-catering cottages and rooms in the village, running numerous shops, various cafes and restaurants, as well as continuing to charge an entrance fee to the village for tourists.

Votive coins hammered into tree strump in Portmeirion Woods

A Redwood tree in Portmeirion woods

Portmeirion

The large-scale village chess board

The village of Portmeirion is a must-visit for anyone travelling through North Wales, be they Prisoner fans or not. A real curiosity of a place, walking around the unique sights and sounds can really get the creative juices flowing. Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit whilst staying in the village and I would have loved to have settled down in one of numerous seating areas there to take pen to paper myself.
Today we were hindered by having to undertake the long drive home in the afternoon as our visit was a rather hurried walk through of the locale. Maybe next time though...

Berserk! Draft 2. Chapter 8.

Solstice...

Writing a Christmas ghost story...

Whilst holidaying in North Wales, I started work on the actual writing of my 2020 Christmas ghost story ~ Solstice.

Published! The Verry Volk

Two days ahead of schedule, I am happy to report that The Verry Volk has now been published and is available in both paperback and Kindle editions :) You can purchase your copy here.

The Verry Volk book cover

The Verry Volk - published and ready to purchase from Amazon

Now it is time for me to concentrate on continuing the second draft of Berserk!

Shed Sounds

A field recording of the last summer day we spent in our garden in 2019. As with all my audio recordings, this is best listened to with a good set of headphones:

Berserk! Draft 2. Chapter 7.

Berserk! Draft 2. Chapter 5. Completed.

Sunflowers at Night

Following on from last year's visit to the local sunflower field, I paid a late 3 a.m. visit to the site last night. It was an eerie experience to say the least!

Splinter - More Christmas Trouble

I am still experimenting with working out the plots of my books by story-boarding them:

Solstice Postie...

The Hylder-moer

According to early European folk tales, the tree-dwelling spirit, the Hylda-moer, would haunt those who cut down their trees. Furniture made from their trees would also be haunted, the occupants of the house being pinched black and blue by the resident wood spirit. This little titbit of research has inspired events in my forthcoming Christmas ghost story, which I hope to have published by Crimbo 2020 :)

September

The summer of 2019 is fading fast and whilst I still live in dread of the cold, dark and bleak season of winter, I do have a bit of a soft spot for September.

Perhaps more so than New Year, I see September as a time of new ventures, of moving on, of ditching the things that have not worked out so well for me over the past year. I suppose that this feeling is a remnant of the main cycle of yearly change that occurs in the school year, and later the college ad Higher Education years, all of which start in September (or early October in some cases for university courses).

This feeling of renewal balances out the awful feeling that emanates from the yearly turning of the wheel and the slipping away of summer. I will miss sitting out in the sunshine, with either a book or a blank page and pen in my hands. I will miss the joy of gardening, of watching seeds I have sown spring to life and eventually flowering. I will miss the warmth of the sun on my skin. I now have to wait a whole six months for these joys to return. But in the meantime, I have new projects and fresh ideas to work on and lose myself in.

Work on my writing shed will start anew in September (the shed had been needed for more traditional handiwork and joinery over the last few months) and I will start working on my new novella in there in the next few weeks. Those visitors to Pixie-Led with keen eyes might have already noticed that I have already made a tentative start on this next writing project - just rough scribblings so far though, enabled in the quieter moments of my new day job (another fresh start). Now that I am able to put The Verry Volk behind me, I am looking forward to working on this new novella, which is a Christmas ghost story entitled Solstice. I won't go into any detail about this new venture yet, though you may be able to get the gist of the story plot from these initial doodles:

To hopefully help in the writing of Solstice, I have also signed up to a free Open University online creative writing course, which looks like it may be useful to me. I am only on Week Two of the course but I am intent on completing the thing. I will discuss this O.U. course sometime in the near future, but for now I think I will leave this post here.

It is time to embrace the coming month of September and the new season ahead...

Completed: The Verry Volk

I am happy to report that my guide to local faery folklore, The Verry Volk, has now been completed. It should be hopefully available to buy sometime over the next week. :)

In The Shed

Misery in the Garden

What a welcome relief to feel the warmth of the sun again :)

Reading Stephen King's Misery out in the garden

A Beach Campfire Beneath the Stars

Making the most of the last nights of Summer 2019:

Our campfire beneath The Plough constellation

Yours truly beneath the stars

I made a couple of audio recording whilst there too, to help capture better the atmosphere of the evening (headphones needed to appreciate the field recording):

Three Cliffs Bay, Pennard

I took a walk down to this fine beach today:

Three Cliffs Bay

It was a lovely walk down from the car park...

...and I saw this curious scene en route:

Skittles decorating the path down to Three Cliffs Bay

The magnificent Three Cliffs Bay

Three Cliff Bay, looking towards Oxwich

Heading back along Pennard Cliffs...

Pennard Cliffs

...I stopped off for some refreshments at the Pennard Stores outdoors cafe, where I made this short field recording of the background chatter there:

I couldn't think of a better way to round off this year's summer :)

The Verry Volk #10 and #11

With The Verry Volk close to completion, I will conclude this short series of posts sharing some of the photographs contained in the book with these two images, both taken along the immense marshland that stretches from the foot of Llanmadoc.

A pony meandering across the marshlands of Llanmadoc

Cwm Ivy Tor, Llanmadoc

It has been an immense pleasure writing and producing this book, which I hope you will finally be able to get your hands on sometime over the next weekend. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed working on it.

The Verry Volk #9

The sunshine dripping through leafy boughs, Llanmadoc