Speaking Out
The biggest news, as you hopefully know by now, is that I’ve published another book! The second book in the Turkish Village series, Speaking Out, was available on Amazon from the start of the month. It features many of the same characters as the first book, the Kismet Pension, in particular the rather unconventional Fatma. In the first book, she was fighting to save her business (the Kismet Pension), and struggling to find support amongst the villagers. In Speaking Out, they are working together to try to save the village, while Fatma is wrestling with some personal issues.
Of course there is much more to the stories than this. In the Kismet Pension, there is teenage love, a mature lady who falls for a gigolo, and an old man who digs his own grave and goes every day to sit in it. In the new book, there is a stranger with a dubious past living in a minibus, a husband and wife having marital problems and a baby born early that almost has disastrous consequences. If you haven’t started reading the series yet, I hope these teasers will tempt you to start!
Since publishing, I have returned to a book I wrote about five years ago. I sent it to several literary agents, and the submissions editor at one large London agency was quite keen to take it on. Unfortunately, she could not get everyone to agree but she gave me some lovely feedback on the book. It is quite different to the other two, is set in London, and includes themes of family, secrets and how past traumas affect us. I hope it will be ready to publish next month.
The weather this month has been very wet. Although here in Mediterranean Turkey we have a lower total rainfall than the UK, ours tends to fall in torrential downpours—none of that British drizzle here! Sometimes you can barely see out of the window, cars are forced to stop because the wipers can’t cope and an umbrella is useless. That, together with the fact that much of the coastal area is at sea level, means there’s been a lot of flooding.
It has made it hard to do very much this month. Even my morning dog walks have sometimes been cut short by an unexpected downpour or worse, thunder and lightning. We have managed a couple of hikes, but some routes are out of bounds because of flooded gullies or the danger of rockfalls and the forest tracks can be quite muddy.
On the plus side, wet weather means plenty of wild mushrooms. After rain, many people here go into the forst to look for ‘çıntar’—called pine mushrooms (because they grow under pine trees) or delicious milk-caps in English. They are a vibrant orange colour, can be quite large and are very tasty. Another mushroom that is commonly foraged for is the morel mushroom, known in Turkish as the ‘Lamb’s belly mushroom’! There is a farmers’ market in town on Fridays and at the moment it is also full of ‘ot’ – edible plants including the leaves of the poppy plant and wild chicory.
Unable to do much else this month, I have done plenty of reading. Here are a couple of books I can recommend:
Mrs Endicott’s Splendid Adventure – Rhys Brown
Set in pre-war England and France, this follows Ellie Endicott after her husband of thirty years says he wants a divorce. She takes his car and sets off on a journey with her cleaning lady and an elderly friend from the village to visit the south of France, where they find themselves caught up in the secrets of a small village and then the war. It is a lovely look at the friendships between women and what they can achieve together.
The Zig Zag Girl – Elly Griffiths
I love Elly Griffith’s books and have read all her Ruth Galloway series. This is the first in the Brighton series, which is of special interest to me as I grew up near Brighton. It is a detective novel set in the post-war period with a very likeable detective and some colourful characters, such as his friend, Max Mephisto, who is a magician working the slowly-dying variety show circuit. It’s an easy, enjoyable read and the added bonus is that there are several books in the series and lots more of Elly Griffiths books to explore!
Hope it’s beginning to look like Spring where you are.
Melanie