Here we are at the launch of Charlie Gracie’s first novel To Live With What You Are. I was lucky enough to get an early copy, and I can tell you that it is a beautifully written account of the lives of two thoroughly dark characters. How he manages to make them so understandable, and to convey their darkness so completely without using the kind of language that would give you nightmares I don’t know. It has a delicate precision and careful balance, so you’re dragged into places where you would rather not be before you notice.

As you can’t really see, it was a well-attended event, full of friends and family and writing buddies from our shared experience with Stirling Writers. There were spiced orange squirrel cookies – a flavour I was very pleased with – and fig rolls because they feature in the novel, and we talked about poetry and prose, and where they overlap and how they differ, and about haggards and wild places, and I’ve made a date to go and see the wild angelica on Thornhill Common with illustrator (she’s worked with David Bellamy) and children’s book author Jill Dow who lives there and are inspired by it. There are more herb poems to come! We sold lots of books, which was very welcome.

And while I think about it, may I remind you that you can buy my books from the shop on this site (if you don’t like using Paypal get in touch and I’ll sort out another payment method), or from the brand new shiny Red Squirrel Press website. Neither Red Squirrel Press nor I charge for postage within the UK, but if you are further afield, please email and I’ll check the postage to where you are.They also appear on the Waterstones database, so you should be able to get them from there, and you can also get Wherever We Live Now and The Territory of Rain on Amazon.

There will be a newsletter going out shortly to all my subscribers, with news of something I’m going to try from March next year. I had a Facebook group called Herbs and Poetry, and this has gone a bit quiet lately, but I thought I might do some herbs and poetry newsletters, with a herb of the month, and a poetry prompt and short discussion related to it. Please sign up to the newsletter if you’d like to get it.