Chorlton Book Festival

Another great event in South Manchester is fast approaching. Chorlton Book Festival!!
As part of it, I'm talking about blending fact and fiction, relationships and a career and reading from my novel, "Meeting Coty." If you want to know more about Francois Coty, one of the great perfume makers of his generation, join the debate about how people manage all the different elements in their lives, or just sit back and listen, please join us at Chorlton Library Monday, 9th of November at 2pm. This is a free event.
Now, to crack on with some work.....

Film Review and bits of dance

I came home from the South Manchester Writers' Group yesterday evening and watched "Lady Chatterley" on television. (French version, 2006) It was beautifully shot, taking us through the seasons as though we were there. You could smell the woods, feel the breeze and then the early summer sunshine. It took its time and cut from scenes when the scene had done its job. No perfectly finishing something off. The actors weren't Hollywood perfect, but charismatic in an understated french way. The dialogue was minimal and when there were full conversations, there were no frills. It was sensual without trying. Practical in the first love scenes, so that it developed each time the two main characters met. Thank you Channel 4. Beautiful film making.
I'm glad I didn't go to the pub so I caught this film.

Tonight, I'm going to watch and maybe join in some Eastern European dance at the Didsbury Arts Festival.
There's a dance show on at the Lowry though too - contemporary dance which looks good too....

I'm working on Leaving Coty today. It won't be finished for Christmas...well, not in publishable form.

Didsbury Arts Festival

Juba do Leao, Pegada, Islington Mill, 2009
On Sunday 20th of September Juba do Leao performed as part of Platform4 Festival in Picadilly Gardens, Manchester.
A warm, sunny day of amazing events. Please look up the website to see more. Outdoor events such as these are what the city centre is all about.

And from Sunday, 27th of September - Didsbury Arts Festival

Thank you to the people who turned up to La Tasca in Disbury last night. I really enjoyed the evening as it felt as if we could all become friends and have lots of things to move on to and discuss. You may not feel the same, but I felt I would love to discuss other books and films and snippets we've read or seen.
So, thanks too to the organisers of the Arts Festival. It shows up more and more how important these events are for bringing people together and opening up spaces for such discussions and sharing of interests. And locally because it is not only about what is under discussion, but about perhaps going into a venue that you may not have been in before, stepping out into a subject matter or art form you wouldn't naturally seek out, but because it is on your doorstep, you 'give it a go.'
These events open up new experiences for everyone involved.

So many thanks and I hope you enjoy the book and maybe write a few words about it...

Ruth

The summer - autumn

I feel as though I've been out of action forever! Over the summer we have had visitors from abroad, big family events, a few days here, there and back again - to the Lakes, the North Yorkshire moors, West Yorkshire moors and back home and out again.
And a lot has happened emotionally as well. We've all been tested in the household. I've learnt I have to say 'No' when I don't want to say 'Yes.' Sounds simple probably for many of you, but I've hardened up this summer. I'm not going to put up with rubbish anymore.
So that's a good thing that's come out of August.

And so I've not been around to work much so feeling a strong need to write at length again rather than in snatches. Leaving Coty is coming on well. It seems natural to be back with Tessa and Co.

Erosion is improving with this latest edit. Clarifying and focusing. Must keep on top of that.

One thing else that has cropped up, as I'm not writing by numbers and ticking those set boxes that many people have come to rely on and that makes very safe and to me, boring literature, not even literature, books, I'm beginning to feel sad that the reader is being given more and more then same kind of thing. Where is the choice? I don't want to read the same format over and over or even the same subject matter. I want variety. I'm feeling frustrated. There is variety of sorts, just feels that the band wagon is rolling the same as it always has, whatever starts it rolling. I'd like to ride bare back once in a while.

Meeting Coty Book Review

Many thanks again to the next reviewer - I am spacing them out in the order I've receive them, so they are coming! And thank you all for the lovely, positive things you say.

Meeting Coty Book Review
by
Hannah Dixon

Meeting Coty is a beautiful book. I love the front cover. The writing on the back summing up the book is like poetry. The novel lives up to both of these. It is so beautifully written evoking the time it is set and all the sights and scents of perfume which feature strongly in the story. The story follows Tessa from being a young girl to when she is an adult as she dreams of working for Francois Coty who is a famous perfumer. She seems connected to him and there are scenes which couldn't possibly happen when she imagines she is with him, but this fantastical side runs through the book and it works.
There is definitely a spanish element to the book in this and in the way the author describes love, jealousy and loss. It is very powerful, imaginative and visual. The writer gives the reader space to see all the scenes she describes which I liked because she made it easy to visualise all the characters and what was going on as if you were watching the film. And I loved the love scene in the graveyard!
This book is like a work of art.

Juba do Leao - Not Part of Festival

After a fantastic review of the Juba do Leao performance last Saturday, 11th of July, in Manchester's International Festival's Fringe, Not Part of Festival, the band are attending the City Life Magazine Awards Ceremony on Monday, 20th of July 2009.

Every drum playing finger and dancing toe crossed!

Book Review - Meeting Coty

"Meeting Coty Review"
by Heather Cross

Meeting Coty is about a girl called Tessa Garcia who wants to work for the perfume maker Francois Coty. It is set from about 1910 to 1920 something. Tessa lives with her spanish family in London and the book is about all the people in the family and how they all want different things and don't want what they have and how they fall out and how some get on and some don't. I really liked all this as it seemed very real. The unusual thing was that all the pictures and things they were doing. The way the writer puts things seems to belong to the time it was set which I thought was very clever. It made me think that I was in a different world which I liked. It also seemed as if the people would be exactly the same now and they would have the same fall outs and problems. Tessa is very keen to go to work, but everything seems to stop her. Her dad doesn't want her to work, even her sister doesn't. And she doesn't need to work either, which her dad tells her. He says jobs should go to people who need it. I hadn't thought about that before, so that was interesting. And then Tessa meets Sandes and she falls in love and that takes up all her time. But then the other characters in the book make her think of what life is going to be like in the future and the rest of the book is about what she is going to do. I couldn't guess, so I kept reading. I couldn't put the book down. And lots of people die, but I won't tell you who but it's really sad and it surprised me.
I'm looking forward to the next book so I can see what happens next. I want to know more about all the characters as I feel I really like them. It's only a short book and you can't put it down so it doesn't take long. I never read books more than once but I'm going to read this again until the other one comes out.