Secret Provence
Dear Friends and Readers, PLEASE tune to Channel 5 in on Sunday and join me in PROVENCE.
Newsletter August 2021
Hello! I want to begin this missive with an apology for the delay in writing a Newsletter. I know, it has been several months since the last one. Truth is, it has been a hectic summer and I have quite a bit of news. I am writing this from Greece where I have been attending…
Marseille, snapshots of a mighty city
I have recently been on an excursion to Marseille. It is a little less than two hours west of our Olive Farm in the direction towards Spain. Marseille is an ancient harbour city set right in the middle of the stretch of Mediterranean that fringes the south of France. I have written at length in…
Spring 2021
Hello! I am writing to you from the South of France where our first waves of spring have been very contradictory. The blossoms have been simply spellbinding. Hours I have spent strolling about the land breathing in the delicate scents of fruit flowers only to wake the next day to heavy rains, which have driven…
Happy New Year
Dear Friends, Spring is coming – it really is. We’ve had some wild days here at the Olive Farm with winds blowing and trees creaking like ghosts opening doors in old houses. Here’s a visitor who came to cut three trees for the neighbour because they were threatening to fall on another neighbour’s house right…
Saving lives in the French Alps. An Act of Love.
How do we find the stories, the ideas for our novels or how do they find us? I am always on the lookout for ideas, for seeds that might grow like flowers into fully-realised stories. We writers are always digging about for nuggets. Magpies, we are, looking for what shines. Sometimes, the work involves weeks,…
December Newsletter
Dear Friends, Well, if you are reading this you, like Michel and myself, are still here. Thank heavens. We have all struggled through and reached December of this crazy, rollercoaster of a year of 2020. Earlier, back in the spring, which seems like many lifetimes ago now, I lost two very dear friends to Covid….
An Act of Love
Dear Readers and Friends, I have been waiting quite a while to send out this letter to you, waiting while we finalised the colours and the look of this cover pic for my next novel, AN ACT OF LOVE, to be published in the UK on 29th April 2021. It is available for pre-order on…
Newsletter, September 2020
Dear friends and readers worldwide, It is ages since I have written a Newsletter. There have been several blogs posted directly to my website, but no Newsletter. My sincere apologies for this; we have been experiencing technical difficulties with the site and some glitch or other was blocking mails going out. Grrr. Fingers crossed my…
Felixstowe Book Festival video
A Felixstowe Festival Zoom Chat between Carol and Rachel Sloane. This replaced the cancelled event https://www.facebook.com/FelixstoweBookFest/videos/716342118912290/
My first book as film
Someone sent this to me recently. It is the film found on Youtube, adapted from my very first novel for children, THE HAUNTED SCHOOL. It was made into an eight-part TV series which we shot in Australia. Disney bought the series and edited it into a film, (which is the link below). It won the…
Jean Giono’s Legacy
I am frequently asked who my favourite writers are; authors I return to time and time again. One of the first who springs to mind is Jean Giono. Son of a cobbler and a laundress, he is a Provençal writer through and through. Henry Miller, the great American writer, described Giono as one of the…
June
Hello to you all, I am writing this from our home/office up north, east of Paris. The pic above was taken at the farm last week. We’ll be back down at the farm after the weekend. It’s mighty hot here in the Seine-et-Marne region with the temps soaring to 34C yesterday and then an overnight…
Enjoying the peace and quiet at the Olive Farm
Dear Friends, It is the last day of April. I am at my desk looking out onto more blossoms than I have ever seen here before. It is a riot of colour and a joyous expression of nature’s determination to live and procreate. Our “confinement” will due to ease in twelve days from now. It…
Easter
Dear friends, I am waving a hello from the Olive Farm where we are in our fourth week of lockdown. In spite of the horrific virus that has led us all to be isolated from one another, there are positives to be found during these days of “confinement”. Michel and I count ourselves very lucky…
Memoir Workshop
Last Week of May in Listowel, Kerry, Ireland. There are still a few places left on my workshop in Listowel at the end of May. We had a wonderful time last year. If you are in Ireland and fancy joining us, here are the details. Do come along. I would love to see you there!…
January 2020
This is worth your time. Do read through to the end https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybees-deaths-almonds-hives-aoe Here is an Oscar-nominated film about beekeeping: https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/oscars-2020-honeyland-international-documentary-north-macedonia.html