DOGGERLAND

 

I belong to a study group run by Newcastle University Archaelogy Department and yesterday we visited the highest point of Doggerland; namely Low Hauxley on the north Northumberland coast.

Before the ice caps melted and created what we now know as the North Sea, you could walk from say Brussels across Doggerland, to Newcastle. Doggerland was what we now call Dogger Bank, once famous fishing grounds and not actually all that deep below the surface [on average less than 100 meters]. This all happened much more recently than people realise and Neolithic tools caught up in trawler nets show that Dogger Bank was an inhabited landmass as recently as 6000BC. Then, the rising sea slowly flooded the land and the inhabitants had to migrate.

The significance of Low Hauxley is that there are Cists and burials there. From the point of view of the people living on Doggerland, Low Hauxley would have looked like a mountain; an ideal place to bury a chieftain.

 

IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR

Met a very nice girl last week called Karen James who has been giving me Blogging lessons. She says this Blog is too one-dimensional and that all I talk about is my book and I should speak about other things that interest me. So, starting this week, I am going to make regular posts regarding my cultural life. See how that goes.

Image of the Author

Very nice review from Clare at 50 a year

The writer of this novel, Scott Beaven, got in touch after reading my review of Unravelling Oliver. He reckoned his book Riccarton Junction would be my style, and a few days later this beauty arrived in the post.

Click here to read the rest of Clare's review

You can also read it over on Good Reads here

Thank you Clare. Love the calligraphy.

xx

Kelso Library

We now have copies of Riccarton Junction in all nine Libraries owned by Borders Regional Council.

Jonathan Cowley

Thanks to Jonathan Cowley Librarian for Haringey Council who has put one copy of Riccarton in all the North London Libraries

This is the actual cover

Another month, another book!

Another month, another book! This is the cover art for my second book, Train That Carried The Girl. It is due to be published on Amazon Createspace on 1st February with the Kindle version to follow a week later. It is long: almost 700 pages but it covers almost twenty years of my life following on from Riccarton. I thought about splitting it in two and effectively having a trilogy but when it came to it, the events seemed to flow into one another without any obvious juncture or break, so I decided to wrap up everything in one book.
It is Literary Fiction but regard it as a psychological drama rather than a thriller. Like Riccarton, it features a procession of irredeemably misogynist men [I have met them all, believe me!] so if that isn't to your taste, best give it a miss. Also, there is grimly difficult scene in which I am almost raped and again, you should give the novel a miss if you think that might upset you.