DRIVE SAFELY - IT MAY BE YOUR LAST CHANCE....

While browsing Google, as you do, and wondering about friends and writers I havent met for a while, I happened across fantasy writer William Horwood's website.

It's a long time since I saw William but I have fond memories of his arrival at my Lake District home one lunchtime, waving a bottle of champagne, and cheering about a new property he had just bought. After broaching the bottle and eating lunch, we walked up the fell and he pointed out tiny sundew flowers, which I had never seen before. William  always was a stimulating, interesting and amusing companion.

Anyway, the blog I found was about his experience after inadvertently breaking the speed limit one day. (He was doing 37mph in a 30m limit area.) He was offered the chance of attending a Speed Awareness Course at a cost of £60, rather than have 3 points on his licence. He chose this and found it interesting, instructive and, I guess, rather salutary. 

As one who always likes to tread in the footsteps of the famous, this happened to me too, not so long ago. I think I was doing 34. I realised the minute I'd passed the sign and slowed down, but too late, and a fortnight later along came my own invitation. I can tell you, after 48 years with a clean licence, I was mortified and only too pleased to have the chance to keep it clean. So off I went. And it was interesting. So much so that I decided to take it a step further and apply for a Skill for Life Course with the Institute of Advanced Motorists - something I've long wanted to do anyway.

I've just completed the course - six or seven runs with an Observer and then one with a Senior Observer, just to get a different eye on me - and taken the test, and I am more thrilled than I can say to tell you that I passed. It's a pretty intensive test, lasting nearly two hours and with a bit of everything - country lanes, estates with 20mph limits, motorway or dual carriageway, you name it - and on the day I took it I had heavy rain, standing water and spray to contend with too, but my examiner (a police driver) was relaxed and reassuring and at not time did I feel intimidated. I was just allowed to drive and display my newfound skills.

After 48 years on the roads, what were they? Well, things have changed a bit in the meantime - the motorway was a new concept back in 1964, there are a lot of different road signs now, there is a lot more traffic, and roundabouts are more complex. But if you drive all that time, you develop and grow with the changes, so I don't think I was all that bad. (But then, they say that 95% of drivers think they are above average, and obviously they can't all be!)

What I did discover was that I didn't use my nearside wing mirror enough (we didn't even have wing mirrors when I started!) and especially when turning left (there might be a bike coming up on the inside) and in fact I didn't use any of my mirrors enough. 'Only once every thirty seconds,' my Senior Observer said reprovingly. 'Try once every ten seconds!'

I also didn't know how to merge properly with motorway traffic (get your speed up to theirs, so that you are going as fast as the gaps) or to stay at that speed as you leave the motorway, so as not to inhibit vehicles behind you. I knew (from the Awareness Course) the two-second rule when following other vehicles - note when the chap in front passes some mark and mutter 'only a fool breaks the two-second rule' before you pass it as well. (Three or even four are better sometimes, but just saying it doesn't have the same effect.) But I didn't know about Limit Points on ordinary roads - always drive so that you can stop within the distance you can see ahead. Instead of making you go more slowly, it gives you the confidence to drive a little more briskly ('making progress' in IAMs language) and not hold up other traffic - one of the great principles of IAMs. (If you cause frustration in  another driver and he/she then goes on to have an accident, you have probably contributed to that accident.)

And that's what this course and the test have given me - confidence. As an older driver, I was aware that I was beginning to lose it a little. I was starting to drive more slowly. I didn't like big, busy roundabouts. I was beginning to to enjoy my driving.

Driving smoothly, stopping without a jerk and consideration for other road users was never a problem for me. But that's not enough. I wanted to know that I was a safe and efficient driver, and would continue so for the rest of my driving life.

So maybe breaking that speed limit back in March did more than myself a good turn. Since then, I have indeed been more aware. Awareness is the key - awareness of yourself, your car, of other road users. All of them, from other vehicles to mothers with toddlers and buggies, to the elderly and disabled, to people who may be deaf and not hear you, to the person walking a dog, to cyclists, to horse riders. Everyone.

Hopefully, if you see me coming now you won't need to duck into the hedge to save your life. But how will you know it's me?

I'm the one with the big smile, because this year I achieved something, and I am pretty dead chuffed about it!

Getting to Grips with E-Books

The time has come. After 45 years of being in print, I am now embarking on a kind of publication I could never have dreamed of all those years ago: e-books.

Mind you, all my Lilian Harry books have been in e-format and available on devices all across the board for some time now. But I didn't have anything to do with that - I just signed a contract and those nice people at Orion did it. As far as I was concerned, it 'just happened'. And very nice too.

But, like a lot of us long-serving authors, I have quite a few books published by other houses (Headline, Severn House, Scholastic etc) which are now out of print. And it seemed to me and to my agent, Caroline Sheldon, that it was time they saw the light of day again. The light of cyber-space, anyway.

So, starting with my first venture into historical novels, The Glassmakers Trilogy, written nearly 25 years ago and under a different name*, we're embarking on our first Journey Into Space (who else remembers that?). And it's pretty nearly as exciting and breathtaking as the real thing. Well, for me, anyway.

There are three books (you guessed that, didn't you) and they were published, along with five others, by Headline. (Hopefully, if these do well, the others will follow them on to an e-reader near you.) Starting with CRYSTAL, they follow the fortunes of the Henzel and Compson families from mid-nineteenth century Stourbridge in England's Black Country,  through the glittering colour of Paris at the time of the Great Exhibition and the subsequent desperation of the Siege (in BLACK CAMEO), to the burgeoning 'Crystal City' of Corning, New York State,USA,, where the story is completed in CHALICE.

I had not read these  books since they were published (you don't, do you? Or maybe you do...) so to read them all again, in quick succession, was an eye-opener. Had I really written these absorbing stories? Done all that research? Created these colourful characters? Had I ever really known all that about making glass?

Well, I suppose I must have done. And I feel rather proud of them now, and not at all unhappy about seeing them go out to a wider world than they ever found in print, and - I hope - find a lot more readers.

So how is it done? Well, I reckon I am still on ther lower slopes of a fairly steep learning curve. I've had to master Dropbox - easy enough, and a wonderful way to manage proofs, which arrive magically on my screen, can be read and corrected there and seen immediately by the publisher. Surely all publishers will use this method before long?

I'm now tackling the art of metadata, a word which had not been in my vocabulary until now. That means making it possible for people to find (or stumble across) your books before they even know they exist. You know the kind of thing - you google, say, tulips, and before you know it you're reading the history of Amsterdam, booking a river cruise and ordering a copy of a novel to read along the way.

Or you look up your favourite author and notice someone else who writes the same kind of book and think, hm, I'll try that.  Or.... but you get the picture, I'm sure.

Metadata is making sure this happens. Giving my publisher, who is a lot more clever than I am over all this, as much information as possible so that they can work their magic and attract the attention of web-crawlers which trawl about looking for words, phrases or quotes and getting them up there where you might look.. (Goodness knows how authors who don't have someone to do this get along. They too must be a lot more clever than I am.)

Then there's cover design to attract the eye. I was entertained to find my e-publisher (Acorn, by the way) recommending the designer who had been responsible for my Lilian Harry jackets, not knowing that I was LH! I am hoping she will be the one to design new jackets for these too. Not that they'll actually wear jackets, like a print book, but there will be a nice picture to look at when you buy.

As I said, I am only part of the way up the learning curve but my new e-publisher has been helpfulness itself. I had to pay a bit upfront (that felt a bit funny!) but remarkably little, and I have a proper contract, negotiated by my agent. And I get a decent share if/WHEN the books sell. By the way, we have to set the price - I have no idea what readers will be prepared to pay. But again, Acorn will help and advise.

So for those who enjoy Lilian Harry books and don't like the wait in between, here is the good news. More books will be arriving, of a different kind but - I hope - equally enjoyable. Hurry along to your e-reader and snap them up. And please do let me know what you think - either by email to my website www.lilianharry.co.uk or on Twitter @LilianHarry

I'll let you know what happens during my climb up this new learning curve.

Oh - nearly forgot. The name to look out for is Donna Baker. OK? And the  three books of the Glassmakers Trilogy should be available soon - just in time for Christmas. I'll try to make sure you know.

Cheers!