January Roundup
Hello everyone! Long time no... read, eh? This newsletter may look a little different in your inbox as I've moved to a different service (Buttondown) to get this to you! All the archive from my weekly roundups and writing journey posts should be readable on Buttondown too. I'll be using this newsletter for now as a monthly roundup while I focus more on my fiction writing and more exciting opportunities coming my way - stay tuned.
Ten days of this month were spent in Scotland!
But the year started as it always does with a bit of rearranging, putting away of Christmas things, lots of nice games nights with friends, and some proofreading. I sent off my Roman Empire-spanning crystal short story (so far) to someone in the historical know. At that point it had gone from Neolithic Oxford, through time and Roman trade routes to Lyon. By the time I left for Scotland the gem journey left France and reached Portus near Rome. The novel itself is now over 88,000 words.
It was an enjoyable and productive start to the year, basically. And hopefully there's some amazing opportunities to do with real life archaeology coming my way too. I'll definitely let you know about them when/if they happen.
So, I took a trip around Scotland with a friend which was magical and miraculous really in the fact that it all worked out. We managed to perfectly weave between complete public transport cancellations, storms and snow.
We went to Glasgow first, arriving quite late in the day, but I really enjoyed exploring Kelvingrove Park in the morning, the frosty paths, sloping views and flowing river. Seeing all the fantastic artefacts from the Antonine Wall (that will probably feature in my next novel) in the Hunterian Museum (which I had no idea was within the university building) was great too. Later that day, on a long train journey, it felt like entering Narnia as we moved into the snow, seeing amazing hills, valleys, forests and waters, red deer running around.
We made it to Fort William just as the town was managing to get itself out of the snow, and the next day were met with amazing views from a walk up Cow Hill by Ben Nevis. Fort William in the snow felt like a Winter Village display piece, like I was living in a decoration that had gone up the loft two weeks before. But everywhere you looked on that hilly walk was postcard-perfect.
We spent that night in Inverness, taking a coach then the ferry the next day to get to the Isle of Lewis, which again was incredible snowy scenery everywhere you looked. As we were on the ferry the local council decided that the buses would start running that afternoon, just in time for us to get from Stornoway to our camping pod by Callanish standing stones - somewhere I'd really recommend staying, perfect cosy compartments on the shore by the ancient site.
Callanish was amazing - I could share all my photos of the views of the hills all around, all the avenues and stones. I think the photo above show the main features - the tall stones in the central circle, textured like trees, the four avenues expanding out from the circle, one flanked by two lines of stones where a local woman was walking her dog! In the centre of the circle is a later burial chamber with a kerb of the mound - I'd really recommend looking up the site more. And from there you could see across to two more stone circles that we also visited.
We spent that night in Stornoway, got the early ferry - which was a much better ride thanks to the weather. I loved sailing in through the snow-capped black islands and hills as the sea got calmer - and we saw dolphins! My first time so close, seeing them sleekly leap in and out of the water like brown-grey knives.
That afternoon we went from Inverness to Clava Cairns, an amazing ancient complex of burial mounds with kerbs, cobble raised circles and pathways, and each with their own stone circle - another I'd really recommend looking up!
That was our last moment of snow. I also spent plenty of time in more museums on the trip - on Stornoway and then later this day at Inverness - both definitely worth a visit for Scottish history.
The next day, after visiting Scotland's largest second hand bookshop in Inverness, we headed to Elgin, where the very kind volunteers at the museum opened up just for me to scour their exhibits. Novel #4 will definitely have something to do with the Elgin area, the coastline where the Picts had a fort at Burghead, and where they carved in a cave that before had been visited and used in Roman and Iron Age times... for beheadings... (And the nearby caves may be where the eponymous sword of my next novel will be forged.)
It was a long walk from nearby Lossiemouth on the coast, over sand (with my first view of snowy mountains while on a sandy beach, across the Moray Firth) then pebbles and rocks until finally like coming home it was there.
The cave was bigger than I thought, a tall, wide space narrowing at the back. The Pictish carvings - symbols that pop up post-Roman to early Medieval times in Scotland - were all on the walls by, on or just outside the entrances. It felt like being in some cold, wet and grey version of an Indy film, me with my torch and a map from the Elgin museum - it was so rewarding whenever we could make out each symbol, some meaningful mark left behind by people 1500 years ago. The stake holes for some ancient funerary structure were very easy to see, as was the modern shrine at the back of the cave with feathers, shells, stones and a few little statues of elephants - a shrine of things not too different from what people appreciated tens of thousands of years ago.
Being in that cave was a different sort of magic to snowy vistas, really worth the walk for me anyway.
But the tide was coming in! And it was getting dark!
Still, we planned it well, and thankfully after a few stepping stones over seawater round one headland, we found the old Victorian carved steps to climb up to the coastal path for the way back to the sand beach and Lossiemouth.
That wonderful day, the artefacts in the museum and the hours of purposeful walking, being in the cave, in the history and the setting for my story, was all made possible because the Elgin museum opened up and was willing to advise me on my crazy plan to visit the cave in January.
Please do go and support them: https://elginmuseum.org.uk/
The last spot after sleeping in Elgin was to spend a couple more days in Edinburgh.
The last time I was in Edinburgh, it was the summer of 2019, between my GCSE and A-Level years. I was there for two weeks with my family, we did all the sites and saw the Fringe, but I also was working on maybe my best self-published book, the final volume of my Diamond Dimensions series, we were watching Lost and two of my favourite album's singles came out, and I started following exercise routines for the first time, a major change for my life as now I always make sure to get an hour in of some form of exercise everyday.
So it was special to be back, if only for two nights. My friend and I had great walks around, saw the National Gallery and the Writer's Museum (it was great to learn about and resonate with three of Scotland's great writers - Burns, Scott and Stevenson), and I spent way too long and took a few hundred more photos than I should inside the National Museum of Scotland - which had a whole basement level dedicated to prehistory to Roman to Viking times, with artefacts perfect for the aforementioned fourth novel, about twenty times more stuff than the British Museum has about our ancient history. The National Museum had all the artefacts found within Sculptor's Cave too!
The last morning before we took the long train home was dedicated to climbing Arthur's Seat, the ex-volcano watching over the city, while the weather was nice. It had rained the day before, but was a lot more windy that day - too windy to actually stand on the peak without clutching the highest point marker.
It was sad to be leaving, to finish that great nine-night journey up the West to the Outer Hebrides then across and down the East of Scotland. We saw so much of the fantastic scenery, history and kind people of Scotland. Much more than any research trip, or trip with a friend, it was a real journey and a lovely way to start the year.
So, that's it really for this month. Since coming back on the 24th, I've written up all my notes, copied some resources, done some general admin and caught up with other things I'd missed. I just managed to attend this fantastic conversation about sci-fi with authors I admire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF8t4K2Hbdg
I'm hoping to launch into my crystal (not so) short story before the end of the month when this goes out, but we'll see.
This month's (comic) books
Thank you so, so much for reading, for your continued support. I can't wait to tell you about my adventures in February and beyond - this is going to be a busy year. I may decide to do more with this newsletter than the monthly updates but we'll see.
Please share this with your friends and family and ask them to subscribe - that would mean the world to me as I do love sharing my various exploits with you all, and would treasure having more people with me on my writing (and life) journey!
Cheers,
Harvey