Our new book! by Sue Purkiss

 Some of you might remember posts I've written before about the writing group I run in Cheddar. Earlier this year, we decided to do something different - instead of having a different task each week, we would write a book - together.

Some members of the group with copies of the book - Jennie, Richard, Margaret, Sally and Heather.

The plan was to create an imaginary village - which, however, is set more-or-less in the area where we live in Somerset, the Mendips. Each of us would create a small cast of characters who would be living in the village, and we would each write three or four stories about these characters.

We soon realised that, though we weren't attempting to write a novel - rather a collection of short stories - we would have to collaborate. It wouldn't work if the characters were confined to their own particular stories; they needed to move between stories, to influence each other, to chat to each other. 

We decided we'd have an underlying problem/situation, and that this would be a proposed new housing development. Some of the villagers are very against this: others have a different view. Against this background, we have all sorts of other dramas. Many are personal - rebellious teenagers, newcomers to the village, elderly inhabitants who have to face difficult choices, racial prejudice, snobbery - but we also have unexplained (and unrevealed) deaths, a spy, a witch (that's no stretch, we live near Glastonbury, which is full of them), and a wise old woodsman called Joe. (We did have several murders, but when the freezer was getting to be full of bodies, we decided it was all getting a bit too Midsomer Murders, so reprieved a couple of the victims.)

It was a very interesting process. The writing took about six months, and there were rebellions along the way: anguished cries of  'But I want to go back to writing something new each week!' and, 'Oh, it'll never work!' But fortunately, we didn't get everybody rebelling at the same time, and the group rallied round in a very nurturing sort of way - 'It's all right, the stories don't have to be the same - you can have a spy/fire/seduction if you want'; 'It'll be over soon and we can go back to normal'; 'Just think, all your Christmas presents'll be sorted...' (Sorry, friends and relations.)

But in the end, it all came together. We wrangled the stories into a sensible order, we gave our village a name - 'Stoneyfield', I edited them, Richard managed to con/persuade his nephew-who's-a-cameraman-at-the-BBC to help us with the cover, we uploaded the lot onto Kindle Direct (that sounds simple - it wasn't all that) - and, well, yer tiz. (That's Somerset for 'here it is'. Sorry if you already knew that.)

Should you wish to buy a copy, (brilliant for reading a story a day over coffee - how can you resist?) it's available here.