Catherine Edmunds art and writing

'wormwood, earth and honey' - pictures and poems on kindle

2011-12-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

We (self and the team at Circaidy Gregory Press ) somehow managed to get the new, revised 'wormwood' done and dusted by Christmas Eve, in the kindle version at least. The other e-versions will appear in due course when the distributor has recovered from Christmas. Links for the kindle version are: amazon uk and amazon dot com

So if you got a kindle for Christmas, and are wondering how poetry and pics combined appear on such machines, then please go ahead and buy a copy.

Thank you!

'wormwood' pictures update

2011-12-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

Yes, I decided the only way to illustrate a poem about Constable's 'The Haywain' was by doing a picture of Constable's 'The Haywain', the only question being how to reduce a massive painted masterpiece to a sketch a couple of inches across with the wrong proportions. I am no Constable, but armed with a blunt charcoal pencil and a scrap of gessoed paper, I went for it, and the end result is something that has vague similarities to what Constable might have done as a thumbnail sketch on a distinctly 'off' day. Not to worry. I think it's recognisably based on the same scene.

After that, I went on to some easier ones. 'white noise' was illustrated by a rosebud. 'south of the border' was simple enough once I'd decided the border in question could be Mexico, so all I needed was a tall cactus and a desiccated landscape. 'channel hopping' is a complex poem full of images, so I picked the easiest - Paris - and drew the Eiffel Tower. Iconic buildings can be useful.

Some were not so obvious. I fancied drawing Charon the ferryman for 'unto death' but in the end went for some bilberries. 'the burning of ice' could have been impossible (how do you draw burning ice?) so I drew a well-endowed white bull instead. (It makes sense if you read the poem.)

Some could only have one possible illustration. 'truth and lies' had to have a picture of Red Square as far as I'm concerned, though some readers may wonder why. The piece of railway graffiti that I used for 'close at hand' was the only possible illustration. People who used to travel from Paddington Station down to the West Country before the graffiti was removed will understand. 'the diver' was a bit of a cheat, as the image has already been used for some cover art, but I reckon plagiarising oneself is fair enough.

And 'the ballad of shane and mavis' could only be erik the snail, though making him look ten feet tall proved impossible.

Nineteen illustrations drawn so far. I reckon another half dozen will do the trick, so I'll return to this after the weekend.

'wormwood' progress report.

2011-12-06T03:22:00.000-08:00

I started at the beginning. The first poem is called 'the stones of the barn'. I took a photo of a stone barn near Muker in the Yorkshire Dales a couple of years ago, so I fished it out, and made a drawing from it. Simple. Would everything else prove that straight forward? Of course not. I fast-forwarded through the collection to 'jasmine'. Tried to draw some jasmine. Failed. Tried again. Failed again. Swore under my breath. Broke the point off the charcoal pencil. Sharpened it. Broke it again. Swore again. Jammed the sharpener. You get the idea.

Moved on to 'little piggies'. When I was about ten, I took a photo (transparency, not print) of some piglets. A year or so ago I possessed a bells and whistles scanner which was able to scan transparencies. It since gave up, as these machines are wont to do, but luckily I'd scanned the photo of the little piggies, and was able to use that as a source for the drawing. Success!

'over the sea to annan' was based on a true story of a herd of cows swimming the Solway Firth. I googled the story, and was able to find a photograph of the original herd. The photo was extremely low resolution, but at least it showed me what sort of cows they were, and enabled me to hunt around my own stock for cow photos. I made up a Solway Firthish background. Good. On a roll now.

Or not. Several more failures followed, though also some success with a drawing of a grass snake for 'summer's end' and an iguana for 'iguana'. Polperro was also straight forward enough. For 'sibling rivalry', I thought about drawing a mouse, but instead drew a molecule of buckminsterfullerene. Anyone who understands the poem will see why. Anyone who doesn't, will be as puzzled as the boy in the poem, so it works on both levels.

'Mary' was an easy one to illustrate. The poem was inspired by visits to Gibside, so I used one of my many photos of the place for source material. Anyone who's read my early novel 'The Sand in the Painting' will recognise Gibside as a key location. I tend to do this; to find a place that inspires me and use it in novels, short stories, poems, artwork - anything. Similarly, the last poem in the collection, 'summer's end', is a summary of the themes of my novel 'Small Poisons'. Never let a good idea go to waste.

So, on to the next set. It's often tricky to know how to illustrate poems. The images are all in the words, so an illustration might lead the reading too strongly; might set the reader on a particular path and prevent them from seeing other possibilities. That can't be helped. The astute reader might look at some of the pictures and say: 'No, that's completely wrong for that poem.' I hope some of them do. If I'm going to be literal, then I need to illustrate 'Tom doesn't see' with a Constable's 'The Haywain'. Now there's a challenge. Will I, won't I? Not sure. Will report back in due course.

wormwood rides again

2011-12-02T01:04:00.000-08:00

'wormwood, earth and honey' is being e-booked. The poems have been subjected to mostly very minor tweaks (to remove punctuational peculiarities and a small number of wince-making phrases) so it's still fundamentally the same book. Now the hard work begins. This is to be an illustrated version. My view is that people's eyes light up when you tell them something has got pictures in it. I've tested the water on facebook and twitter and received very encouraging responses. Even people who already have the paperback have said they'll buy an e-version with pics.

All I have to do is draw the pictures.

This is going to be a sort of mini-blog in which I chart my progress.

Step one: I have decided on materials. I'm working grey scale with high contrast, so will be almost certainly using charcoal and black fine-liner on gessoed paper. I've done this before, and it works.

Step two: the paper I have in stock is too big so I will need to cut it right down, partly for ease of scanning, and partly because a small picture is generally quicker to do than a large picture. Also, as far as illustrating is concerned, if the illustration is done in the first place not much bigger than it will appear in the e-book then it's far easier for the illustrator to get it to look 'right'.

Step three: decide which poems to illustrate. They will need to be spread throughout the anthology rather than be all in one section, obviously, as I don't want to muck around with the order of the poems.

Step four: make some porridge. It's cold today. I need fuel before I do anything else.

A-Z: an illustrator's perspective

2010-11-09T00:31:00.000-08:00

An illustrator’s tools are traditionally a piece of rough paper and a pencil for sketching out ideas, followed by a sheet of cartridge paper and a pen for the finished piece, but BeWrite’s ‘The A-Z of Punishment and Torture’ is not a traditional book; it’s an e-book. A different approach then? Would the illustrator need to be a techno-geek who has mastered the very latest graphics software? No. My illustrations for the A-Z were done using a cheap fine-liner pen on standard photocopy paper. The only hi-tech thing I did was to scan and email them to the publisher rather than posting the hard copy. As an artist, I like the fact that these pictures are artefacts and exist in a very real sense; that if I so wish I can frame them and put them on my wall without having to print anything out. Whether I’d want to hang them on my wall is another matter entirely. The clue is in the title. Punishment and Torture. Ouch. I like the rat picture, but of course rats aren’t to everyone’s taste. I saw one the other day outside my living room window. It was sitting on a bench and cleaning its whiskers. It looked for all the world like a dark brown squirrel but with a slim long tail instead of a bushy one. Sweet, I thought. My husband thought otherwise. Perhaps the rat won’t go on the wall after all.

So are these illustrations ‘rats’ or ‘squirrels’? I think they’re a bit of both. The rat itself was drawn for the ‘A’ chapter. I chose to illustrate ‘Animals’ rather than ‘Amputations’ as although I’ve done horror illustrations in the past, I’m not into nastiness and gore, and neither is this book. The information is fascinating, but it doesn’t set out to shock or sensationalise, and I was happy to bear that in mind when planning the illustrations. You’ll find nothing graphically revolting in here, but plenty to make you wince and wonder at man’s inhumanity to man.

For ‘B’ I had a wide choice: Banishment, Bastinado, Beating, Beheading, Bilboes, Birch, Boiling and frying, Boot, Boring, Brainwashing, Branding, Brazen Bull, Burial, and Burning. Whilst tempted to draw a thoroughly ‘boring’ picture, I decided that would be silly, so went instead for burning, and drew a young woman tied to a stake and surrounded by flames. I duly e-mailed the picture off to be approved or not, and was told she didn’t look miserable enough – fair comment, so I added a tear rolling down her cheek and turned her mouth down at the corners; a simple enough fix. The temptation to go over-the-top and give her a Münch-like ‘scream’ was strong, but I resisted. I wanted to go for subtle. Suggest the horror. Don’t shove it down the reader’s throat.

And so it went on. Sometimes I would draw something that was deemed too obscure or too far away from the text to work, so I would have to re-think. Sometimes the first drawing would be too simple to work as a full page illustration; sometimes too complex to work well on an e-reader. Sometimes the editor would love an illustration, only to change his mind a week later when it occurred to him that it wouldn’t work for one reason or another, and I’d throw heavy objects at the computer, spit a bit, blaspheme in a most unladylike way, take another sheet of paper and start again. Sometimes an illustration would look fine until we all realised that the hand with the knife going through it (‘M for Mutilation’) looked too much like it had six fingers. That one was a shame. I was proud of that illustration (I love doing hands). Sometimes internet searching for source images became frustrating. ‘I for Iron Maiden’ naturally gave me pages and pages of the rock band and little else. I learned as a result to refine my searches and put words like ‘medieval’ in front of such terms. I also made sure my firewall was strong and my anti-virus and anti-spyware were completely up-to-date as in order to get the best image results I had to switch off ‘safe search’ and scan page after page of gruesome thumbnails through half closed eyes.

And sometimes I had to refuse. I was asked to do ‘Necklacing’ for the ‘N’ image. I couldn’t do that. I’d have had to google images that would have made me physically sick and given me nightmares. So I said ‘no’ and did ‘N for Noise’ instead. I’m a violin teacher. I know what sort of a torture noise can be. I set my camera up on a timer, stood in front of it, screwed up my eyes, covered my ears, and screamed (silently). The illustration you’ll find in the book is therefore one of my more unusual self-portraits, but I feel it has authenticity. And if any of my current violin pupils are reading this, rest assured, I wasn’t thinking about any of you. Not really.

After doing ‘P for Pears of Anguish’ (a seriously ‘ouch’ device) I took a brief time-out to do one-off commission for a friend who wanted a poem and a picture for her new baby grandson. I drew a puppy, as requested, and wrote a sonnet. Phew.

‘Q for Quicklime’ was problematic. It’s not the most picturesque stuff. Looks like lumps of chalk. I drew some in a bucket. It was either that or do something totally grotesque with people being boiled alive in the stuff, which was not the sort of thing I wanted to be drawing. This one was rejected, even though it was a beautiful picture of a bucket. It wasn’t until weeks later that the idea of ‘Queen’s Pleasure’ was mooted, and I was able to draw a stern looking Queen Victoria holding a bunch of keys. I’m still fond of the bucket picture, but can understand why Queen Victoria makes the better illustration.

The letter that had to be re-done most often was ‘V’. Robin Hood was suggested, as in ‘V for Vigilante’, but unless you go down the Errol Flynn/Men in Tights route I reckon you can’t tell it’s really Robin Hood, and I was trying to stay historically authentic. Instead, I decided to go with ‘V for Vendetta’ and draw the Kray twins. I liked the double portrait, but it was rejected on the grounds that they weren’t sufficiently well known internationally. I suggested Al Capone. Brando was proffered as an alternative. I disagreed. For one thing, Brando’s not a gangster. For another, any images of him would be copyright, so couldn’t be used as source material. I drew Capone. Reasonable picture, if a bit of a caricature, but the Krays one had been better. Both were finally dropped in favour of Batman. You can’t argue with cultural icons.

It’s now six months after I started on the project. Every picture has been approved, checked for errors, double-checked, the entire book proofread an incredible number of times by everyone, pictures checked again, emails flown back and forth, and now – finally – it’s finished and I can go back to drawing Connemara ponies and curraghs.

I’ve had a ball. I started off wondering what I was letting myself in for. I ended up thoroughly satisfied that between us – writer, illustrator and editor – we’ve produced a highly informative and fully illustrated exploration of the darker side of humanity that would make a most unusual addition to anybody’s Christmas list. Plenty of people are going to receive e-book readers this year as a gift and are going asking what they can read on their shiny new gadget that’s a bit different. The ‘A-Z of Punishment and Torture’ is the answer.

Me and Charles Saatchi

2010-10-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Me and Charles Saatchi? Well, why not. I’ve joined the Brit art luvvies in a manner of speaking by uploading a selection of my artwork to Saatchi Online As a result, Charles wrote me a charming email saying how happy he was to see my work on Saatchi Online, and how thrilled he was by the high standard, etc. Of course I’m ignoring the fact that everyone who submits to the site receives the same charming email.

Included amongst my uploads is an illustration of Xerxes. Why Xerxes? Because he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work by all accounts, so is featured in the forthcoming A-Z of Punishment and Torture which I had great fun illustrating. This fascinating e-book will be released by BeWrite books next month in time for you to buy a copy for your maiden aunt for Christmas (in revenge for all those jumpers she knitted throughout your childhood). When she receives it, she’ll wink knowingly and tell you that she knew exactly what she was doing, owing to a fascination with the art of punishment by knitting. We forgot all about that one when we were doing the letter K, which in the book is illustrated with a depiction of Kangaroo Courts, rather than small children in jumpers with sleeves that reach the floor, but not to worry.

What else have I uploaded? Ah yes, four of the pictures I drew for Leaf Books’ ‘Spring’ competition, three of which were published in the first edition of their excellent Magazine. I also have an illustration in the second edition, in which I shamelessly promoted my novel ‘Small Poisons’ (Circaidy Gregory Press) by drawing my hand writing the first words of the first chapter. The fact that I never write longhand is neither here nor there.

And then there’s Phemaire; an odd, gargoyle-like creature who will featured on the cover art of a forthcoming anthology from Earlyworks Press.

Watch this space...

New review of Small Poisons by author Daniel Abelman

2010-03-08T02:48:00.001-08:00

Small Poisons, written by Catherine Edmunds, is an organically grown story sprayed with esoteric dementia.

The y chromosomes grasping tenaciously at misinterpreted reality -- the Dad's donation, and the x chromosomes gurgling with a psychopathic tendency to play at wielding butcher's knives, being Mom's contribution -- the offspring stand little chance of being normal. Beyond his years, the younger son dabbles in different personalities while the elder brother struggles socially with stupidity and a bulimia for cyber-porn; he is somewhat behind in years. All is less than hunky-dory when matters take a turn with the visitation of a Garden Demon. A handsome fellow with exotic terrorist eyes, under whose influence the familial flagons of individual mental inadequacies burst, splashing from one to the other. The froth turns contagious; a singular non-specific meld of composting madness now takes a hold, spreading to all members of our unhappy little family. To make matters worse, if possible, the Demon who is having an affair [yes an affair] with a beetle [yes a beetle] is a poet. A bad one.

The book is dedicated to Charles Ross. Charles Ross is a variety of apple tree. Surprisingly weird? Weird is not the word, though soon all becomes crystal unclear as the story zig-zags between house and garden. Inside and outside juxtaposed; flora and fauna capable of intelligent thought and herbaceous souls with a collective conscience and a philosophical bent, contrasting with the humans tamped in a mire of pretentious earthiness. Not surprising is the full suspension of disbelief as Edmunds skilfully brings intelligent interaction between all life forms. Step aside Mr Kipling and his pack of wolves -- over here even the blades of grass have an opinion that counts.

With a plethora of bugs and weeds and bushes and birds, all individual characters in the garden masterly developed, a theme-song most fitting for the tale could be: English Country Garden.

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
How many insects come here and go
How many songbirds fly to and fro

Whistle the tune softly to imbue confidence as you venture out -- there may well be a Garden Demon in your apple tree.

How all is resolved is of lesser importance, as to travel hopefully through Small Poisons is better than to arrive. It's worth reading to find out, though. Definitely.

Two new reviews for 'Small Poisons'

2009-11-10T07:13:00.001-08:00

Here are two fabulous reviews of 'Small Poisons' from a couple of writers for whom I have the deepest respect: novelist Rosalie Warren and poet John Irvine.

*****

Review by novelist Rosalie Warren

Joe is a long-stay patient in a psychiatric ward – unvisited, it appears, by family or friends. 'Small Poisons' is primarily, for me, the story of his illness and recovery, though it is many other things too, and this is as far from a conventional novel as a meadow of wild flowers is from a formal garden.

After a brief introduction to Joe’s hospital ward, where he is reading Kafka in the early hours, we are led into his world – his home, his garden, his family. The veil dividing reality from dream and delusion is semi-transparent and flimsy, constantly shifted by the breeze. We do not know whether Joe’s family are really as he sees them (for his sake and theirs, we may hope not). Some of Joe’s visions are beyond belief – talking beetles, sentient sausages and philosophising caterpillars (there is plenty of humour here, too).

Yet as we follow Catherine Edmunds down her garden path, the impossibilities soon cease to matter and we become entranced, like children listening to a fairy tale. (On first reading Small Poisons I was reminded of long-ago sensations as I read, at the age of seven, Lewis Carroll’s 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' – that never-to-be forgotten combination of shock, suspense, fright, intrigue and finally mild addiction to this illogical but strangely familiar world.)

We meet Cicindela the beetle and her alarming friend, the fairy demon, who seduces and exploits her with his charm. Is he altogether evil? We are never sure. We experience the garden from the point of view of its inhabitants – plants, insects, spiders, the family cat… and we are gently reminded that there are vast ‘alternative’ realities, close to home, from which as humans we are almost wholly excluded. It’s a humbling message, reminding us in a refreshingly subtle and understated way of our responsibility to the natural world. At the same time, we laugh at green-minded Joe insisting that his son dig sandcastles with a useless wooden spade (plastic is bad) and filling his tank with cooking oil that gives off fumes like frying chips.

The human characters are, to put it mildly, disturbing. I’m reminded of one of my favourite authors, Hilary Mantel, as Edmunds provides an unflinching examination of the nastier bits of the human psyche (and also of Mantel’s treacly inseparable mixtures of real and imagined worlds). Joe’s wife Phoebe and the elder son Steven are particularly unpleasant (seen from Joe’s present mental state, at least). I will let you discover them for yourself. Ben, the younger boy, is a more sympathetic character and would evoke enormous compassion if this story were read ‘straight’. It’s difficult, however, not to see these folk as characters in a fairy tale – the wicked mother, the ‘ugly brother’, the neglected younger child who is fed and clothed but otherwise virtually ignored.

No-one appears at all concerned that Ben’s legs no longer work and that he has become confined to a wheelchair. His imaginary companion, Sally, is far from a typical, comforting childhood friend. She speaks in Ben’s (very precocious) voice, yet she is ‘other’ – a threat, capable of inspiring jealousy and fear. Ben misses his father but does not dare to ask where Joe went, after a night of violence and terror that Ben remembers all too well.

The fragile veil between real and imagined, truth and delusion, perception and hallucination, brings to mind Kazuo Ishiguro’s strange dream-like tale 'The Unconsoled' – another favourite of mine. I have already mentioned Hilary Mantel, and see 'Small Poisons' as continuing her tradition, especially in 'Fludd' and 'Beyond Black', of exploring the part of our minds that lurks below the surface, often coming into view only at times of distress, illness and, of course, in dreams. In a novel that also pushes against our tendency to see the human worldview as central, this is particularly powerful – we are led to question the whole nature of reality, interpretation and truth. And all in a superficially simple fairy tale – which is exactly how it should be.

Finally, of course, there are delightful connections here to 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream', with its mingling of human and fairy worlds, the ‘supernatural’ influences unsuspected by the ‘mortals’ – a whole additional reality out there of which they understand nothing. And any story whose heroine is a beetle must acknowledge Kafka, as indeed Joe does in the opening chapter.

Settle down with 'Small Poisons' and let Catherine Edmunds take you into a juicy, earthy and unforgettable world of beetles, fairy demons, ladybirds and dysfunctional families. Discover there that the mirror dividing this world from our own is only a minimally distorting one.

Highly recommended… captivating, funny, and completely, wonderfully new.

Rosalie Warren, 4/11/09

****

Review by John Irvine
Poet/writer/editor

Let me state right away that fantasy is not my preferred genre. Having attempted such fantasy gurus in the past as Anne McCaffrey (oh, you have to read this) without any success what-so-ever, I was not sure that I was the right person to be reviewing this novel, Small Poisons, by Cathy Edmunds. I mentioned my aversion to Cathy who immediately put me right: "this is NOT fantasy, John, there are no wizards or dragons. It is Magical Realism." So, having been suitably educated, I plunged into the peace and splendour of an average suburban garden.

I should have known better, of course, having read a lot of Cathy’s mind-bending, off-the-wall poetry. This ‘average’ garden is anything but average. Think on this: first you toss talking beetles, worms and flowers and a rhymester flower fairy/demon into a pot. OK? Then you add a dash of loony dad, a pinch of self-proclaimed goddess mum (into whose knickers the demon fairy bloke is dead keen to get) with her green beetle acolyte, a grossly fat obsequious son who gets booted about (literally) by his mum all the time, and his crippled younger brother (who has a girl called Sally in his head): well, with those ingredients, you can’t help but get a rich and spicy feed. Oh and there’s also Bobby the cat who spends the entire book murdering a family of sparrows.

The book is certainly that. Rich and spicy. Pungent.

Once immersed in the daily deliberations and mental manipulations of the above menagerie, I had difficulty putting the book down. The plot is not obviously complicated, and can be read seriously as a metaphor for our own daily grind, but it is very, very devious indeed. There is love, tragedy, lust, hope, despair, greed, manipulation, stupidity, remorse, arrogance, death, gluttony, avarice, jealousy, hate, forgiveness and quite a bit of violence in this belly-busting casserole. Have I left anything out?

Everyone in the story wants a piece of the action, and loyalties fluctuate. This one wants that one but can’t have, because that one already is trying for the other one who isn’t interested. Everyone cares about what’s happening to the others except that no-one cares a rotten fig about the cripple. Nice touch that, I thought.

The whole thing is an absolutely wonderful cross-species romp, with some of the most bizarre yet believable characters in any book I’ve ever read. In fact, I’ve never read anything quite like it, ever, and this is because Cathy Edmunds doesn’t take herself seriously (well, not all the time). She’s too smart for that.

This intricately-woven story is saturated with her peculiar brand of decidedly bent humour: very dry and whimsical. She tells a tale with humour that has sober undertones, a story to be read on at least two levels. And it’s challenging. That’s what won me over to her book. The humour, yes, and the challenge to let my mind rampage. There was hardly a moment when I wasn’t smiling or grinning or wincing, urging on this beetle or that fruitcake. It is difficult in the extreme, I can tell you, to be wicked, bent, serious, charming, clever and witty all at the same time. Cathy succeeds in spades. The fact that the woman is artistic, erudite and intelligent helps a lot, I guess.

It is an indication of the author’s thought processes that among this collection of incredible lunatics the only one sane and sensible character she offers us is a ladybird who dispenses non-stop wisdom and pragmatic advice to her friend the shiny green beetle. Ladybird is the thread binding all the other loonies together, albeit tenuously.

After feeding the reader a diet of amazing descriptive images throughout the book, Cathy wraps the whole shebang up with a terrific ending, one I didn’t see coming. I couldn’t imagine along the willowy winding way how she would be able to draw all the many raggedy strings together and leave the reader wanting more. There are so many complex characters and manoeuvres and machinations to bring to a climax, so many sub-plots and sub-texts to coagulate. I was darned sorry when the book came to an end, and that doesn’t happen very often for me

What I really liked so much about the ending was how Cathy....

Hah! You go buy the book and find out for yourself. I thoroughly recommend this novel to anyone who is prepared to suspend conventional thinking for a couple of days, who enjoys the bizarre laced with whimsy, and who revels in amusing madness and mirthful mayhem. And let’s not forget that this talented lady was the cover artist also.

I promise you, you will never look at your garden the same way again...

This book gets my 2009 Mega-Supreme Spotted Dick Pudding with Steaming Compost Award with Bar and five Beetles.

PS: Make no mistake. In spite of my somewhat flippant review, this is a cleverly and skilfully written body of work, filled with rich, iridescent language and chock-a-block with carefully-drawn characters. The sub-plot(s) is rather serious, although one can still enjoy the book without delving between the lines and interpreting the metaphors. The entire storyline has been well thought out and developed ruthlessly to its satisfying conclusion. Of course, there has to be a sequel, right, Ms Edmunds? Cathy?

John Irvine
Colville
New Zealand

Small Poisons - a reader's view

2009-09-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

The publisher liked it, the proof-reader liked it, the various people who read and advised on chunks as I was writing the novel liked it – but until someone goes out and buys the book with their own money and spontaneously tells you how much they liked it, you still have a few moments of doubt. So a huge THANK YOU! to author Jan Harris for saying, I've just finished reading Small Poisons and thoroughly enjoyed it. I expected skilful writing, imagination and a plot to make my eyeballs pop and was definitely not disappointed. You've created a magical world with some fantastic characters and lots of surprises, and it all hangs together beautifully. Awesome work - well done!

The Final Proofread

2009-08-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

… is done. Ah, the relief! The discussions over how far to bend the rules regarding commas are over. The trouble with commas is that if you go absolutely by the book, you don’t necessarily convey the intended meaning, and you certainly can’t go entirely by the book in direct speech, or everything sounds far too formal. If you decide to trust your word processor’s grammar-checker, you end up inserting semi-colons unnecessarily all over the place, so you change half of them to dashes, and then think – hang on a minute. This is stupid. What’s wrong with a comma? And then you count twenty commas in one sentence and take half of them out, and your proof-reader tells you you’re breaking grammatical rules and tries to re-instate them. You’re so busy counting commas that you nearly miss the fact that half your name is missing from the biography page, and a line that should be straight on the cover has a small kink in it.

Too late to change things now. ‘Small Poisons’ is winging its way over to the printers even as I type these words. I will have the first copies in my hands in a fortnight or so. That’s the point at which I’ll notice that Esmerelda’s name changes to Albertine halfway through, and Edgar’s eyes change from blue to brown depending on whether he’s appearing in odd or even numbered chapters.

Luckily none of these characters appear in the book.

Small Poisons

2009-07-31T00:12:00.000-07:00

An apple tree with a name, the scratch of bark, pink blossom, scabby fruits – a beginning – not that I knew it at the time. I grew up with this tree. Climbed it, ate its fruit, knew it intimately. Wrote it into my novel, drew it onto the cover.

What else. Beetles? I have no idea where the beetle came from, other than the obvious Kafka connection. The woodlice come from what I thought was an apocryphal tale until I saw a television chef make an inedible woodlouse pie, which set me wondering.

The garden is a ‘misbegotten attempt to tame paradise’, of course. Chaos and order in balance? No, not a hope, especially not in suburbia, that strange interface between town and country, where neither is allowed the ascendance.

So I entered the garden by a side door, one rarely used, and described what I saw from an angle not usually viewed. Mum, dad, couple of kids, nice garden with an apple tree and a shed. Looks okay from the outside. But… there be poisons here. Small ones. Insidious ones.

And there is love.

Circaidy Gregory Press will publish this novel in a couple of months’ time. Details to follow.

County Durham Open Art Exhibition 2009

2009-01-27T02:42:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted that two of my pictures have been accepted for the County Durham Open Art Exhibition 2009. The theme of the exhibition is People, Lives and Places. I'm showing a pencil drawing of Upper Weardale Show, and a mixed media painting of the River Wear near Bishop Auckland. Both pictures are for sale.

The exhibition runs from 9th to 28th February 2009 at Bishop Auckland Town Hall, Co Durham.

VOTE FOR ME!!!!

2008-06-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

Throughout the month of June, you can vote for the cover art of "wormwood, earth and honey" here. The mere act of voting gives you a chance to win a free copy of the book - so go on! What are you waiting for?

wormwood, earth and honey

2008-02-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

wormwood, earth and honey is my first solo poetry collection, and has just been published by Circaidy Gregory Press ISBN 9781906451042

The poems are accessible but never trivial: warm, earthy, intelligent and – just when you begin to snuggle into the intimacy of it – spiked with fire and venom.

mary

yesterday
she walked between trees
from chapel to ruin

followed a path of sorrel
where the ground dips
into a muddy trap

raced past garden walls
neat bricks, secret delights
peaches,
stolen on a whim

remembered, too late
that sorrel poisons
the unwary

wormwood, earth and honey may be purchased from amazon, or directly from the publisher here.

The Plough Prize 2006

2007-01-05T06:36:00.000-08:00

Yes! I got a 'highly commended'. Here's what Matt, the adjudicator said:

I don't mind admitting I'm still trying out different ways of reading this, but that was one of its appeals, along with its reminder that sound is every bit as important to a poem as sense. I liked the playing around with repeptition and elision, and the surprise of "laugh" in the last line, which can still be read several ways.

topical haiku

2006-12-01T00:05:00.000-08:00

From time to time I send a topical haiku here. These are the ones that have been published so far.

Casino questions
remain unanswered. Odds are,
dice will have to roll…
(6 July 06)

Killer kangaroos
and demon ducklings of doom.
Scary place, old Oz.
(12 July 06)

“Yo, Blair,” he said. Yo?
I don’t know ‘yo’. Yoyo; yes.
But this is no game.
(18 July 06)

“Grievous bodily
Harmison,” he chuckled, with
perfect line and length.
(27 July 06 )

Fold A4 to fit
C5. Fit four in that way.
Eh? Forfeit? What for?
(22 August 06)

the Blair departing
from platform number ten is
not running on time
(7 September 06)

BAE goes green,
makes friendly lead-free bullets.
Less harmful, they say…
(18 September 06)

"Greetings, pop pickers!"
Thus spake Fluff to the angels,
his countdown complete.
(28 November 06)

The Sand in the Painting

2006-11-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Sand in the Painting is my first novel, available from amazon and all online bookstores.

Many thanks to Kay Green from Earlyworks Press for the following review:

The Sand in the Painting
By Catherine Edmunds

Review by Kay Green

This is a startling and intriguing book. The framework is a familiar one – to tell the story of a group of friends as a series of overlapping tableaux, changing viewpoints with each new chapter. Previous examples I’ve read have been promising at the start, but became tedious or repetitive at some point. The Sand in the Painting gave completely the opposite experience. I was a bit dubious when I saw what was ahead, and a bit impatient when I saw that chapter 3 would reiterate things I’d seen in chapters 1 and 2 – but by then I’d been drawn in. My doubts forgotten, I was hooked and the book maintained its grip right to the last page.‘What was she thinking of?’ we so often cry, and, ‘What on earth do they talk about when they’re together?!’ On its lighter level, this book exploits that predatory curiosity: The reader finishes each chapter at a gallop, burning with the desire to open the next and find out what the other one was really thinking, and what he said to her when they left the room.But there is more. Author Catherine Edmunds has presented complex, believable characters in a well-realized setting and created – what? – something between an intelligent romance and a suspense novel. I found myself continually having to change my mind about which characters I was in sympathy with, because I met each one as you do in life: First as someone on the edge throwing in comments, then as the friend, spouse or colleague of someone I cared about – and then suddenly as themselves, with all their motivations and perceptions laid out before me. It’s an object lesson in empathy.The Sand in the Painting, rather like the seed in the oyster shell, is the irritation which stimulates greatness and terror, and the factor which makes human affairs so unpredictable and so creative. With impressive craftsmanship and control, Edmunds develops small actions and reactions between her characters and consistently produces surprising and yet believable revelations right up to the final pages. I approached the last page feeling – briefly – that a trite happy ending might be coming along. Well, as Richard Bach once pointed out, if you’re still alive, your story can’t be finished. And this book demonstrates that. We get a happy ending – but one in which the snags and seeds of future challenges leave the reader busily writing the sequel even as the book is put down.Have you ever walked out of a conversation smugly sure that you understand everyone present better than they understand themselves? Have you ever wisely and capably treated someone in an emotional state or with a mental condition in ‘the right way’? Have you ever washed your hands of a clichéd situation, knowing exactly how it will come out? Well, I guarantee you won’t get through this novel without kicking yourself more than once for your blindness and assumptions.What struck me as the most original feature of this book was the way the complexity of the social interactions it portrays builds up progressively without ever withdrawing to an impersonal, gods-eye-view. The result is that towards the end, when all the friends you now know so well converge in one place, you are so aware of the tender wounds in each of their beings, so mindful of what self-obsessed little despots human beings can be, that the rash chanciness of a roomful of friends hoping to survive a coffee and a chat is terrifying.If you are interested in people, if you want to understand human communication and perception, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. But don’t read it on the train. If you get past the first chapter you will almost certainly miss your stop and have to finish the book in the terminus.