Ireland….and the next story

 I travel to Ireland Wed.to meet the pr lady who will help me launch Soft Voices Whispering in Ireland.  Reviews so far from this side of the water are positive so my hopes are high for a response in the counrty where these stories are set.  Then there’ll be a frenetic three months before I have to settle down and begin to think of what happens after Polishing off the Cherries is finished.   

Actually, I know already.

Just before christmas I visited a woman I met and liked at her workplace. She restores church furniture in a huge warehouse/barn in Molesley.  There’s something very disturbing about wandering around amidst altars, tabernacles and pulpits.  What I really wanted was a confessional – a must for a writer who cannot escape her spiritual awareness however hard she tries.  Some of the stuff was beautiful, some distressed and forlorn.  I fell in love everytime I turned my head but it was the small dusty item shoved under a stool that caught my eye.  The owner was amused at my choice but I recognised it straight away.

About ten years ago I watched an old lady comb the candle tray in a church with her fingers.  I wasn’t a writer them but I knew straightaway that one day this would mean something.  When I bent down in that warehouse in Molesley to pick up my find, I knew what it was.

 I’ll tell you once I get the first three chapters written.