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Field hare sitting beside a gate

News From The Farm!

It's another month, and so it must be another newsletter. Welcome to News From The Farm, the semi-regular ramblings of me, James Oswald, author and cattle farmer.

You're receiving this email because your name and email address is on my list. I hope that was intentional, although surfing the internet while under the influence comes with all manner of surprises. If you don't remember signing up, you can unsubscribe at any time. Either reply or use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Rather than the western world's insistence on the old Latin saw in vino veritas, I prefer the Japanese attitude to things said and done while drunk, which is that they don't count. So I won't take it personally if you leave in the sober light of day. Have a read first though, you might just like what you see.
 


Regular reminder - the reply email address comes straight to me, so if you've any burning questions you want to ask, observations you want to make, offers of film production or the like, feel free to get in touch. I try to answer every email that needs answering, even if it sometimes takes me a while. Oh to have minions to do all these things for me.

But if you do get in touch, for whatever reason, please spare a thought for my inbox and delete the contents of the original email (this newsletter) that appends itself to your message. My poor Mac Mini is getting old, and struggles with multiple large files.
 


Free Stuff!


I sometimes forget that one of the bribes I use to convince people to sign up to the newsletter is the offer of free stories. You can find them by clicking on this link. Every so often I'll add something new in there, so it's worth clicking the link even if you think you've read everything already.

You can also read an entire novel - One Good Deed. This is something I wrote a while ago, and never thought was quite good enough for publication. I'd probably have rewritten it, but then Tony McLean became famous and I've not had the time. I put it up in sections during the first lockdown, and it's still there for anyone who wants to see what my first attempt at a thriller reads like.
 

Competition Time!


Following on from last month, two of the previous winners did get in touch, and their books have been sent out. That left me with two copies of Bury Them Deep in hardback, so I've gone back to the magic hat and pulled out two new names. Emails have been sent, but if you've not received them please check your spam filters:

Lily Packer
Grace Mitchell


I'm still trying to work out how to run a competition from within the newsletter. If there are any MailChimp experts reading this, what I'd love to be able to do is have a single 'enter competition' link that automatically tags the email address of the person to whom the newsletter has been sent, should they chose to click it. I have no idea if this is possible, let alone how to do it.

Writing News


Edits, copy edits, proof edits and final checks have been done, and now the countdown begins to publication of Con Fairchild's third misadventure, Nowhere To Run. It's scheduled for UK publication in hardback, eBook and audio on November 11th, which seems a long time away but really isn't!

The cover for this one is a slight departure from the previous two, reflecting the largely rural setting of much of the book. It's been up on Amazon for a while, and I may have shown it to the world first on my twitter feed, but here it is now.
 

That's either not Con in the picture or it is, depending on your point of view. I don't think her hair's red enough, and I'm fairly sure she doesn't have a bright yellow rain coat. It's a great image though, and pops nicely. Hopefully it will stand out on the shelves in bookshops (and maybe supermarkets).

I still have to sort out a cover for the US and Canada edition in eBook (and all the formatting for that too). More details when I have them, hopefully the next newsletter.

In the meantime, since I'm far too generous to you all, here's a link to the opening chapter.

The rest of my writing time is taken up entirely with the edits to All That Lives, Inspector McLean book twelve. I'm a little over halfway through and have already deleted ten thousand words. Maybe I'll put them on a deleted scenes page on the website one day - nothing is ever wasted!
 
 

Kindle Deals!


Heads up to my US readers. Amazon has chosen Dead Men's Bones and Prayer for the Dead for a weekly price promotion, from the 9th to the 15th of August 2021. That's next week if I get this newsletter out in time! Both titles are a mere $1.99. Bargain!
 


Farming News


The first of August saw Diuc the bull introduced to the cows, much to his delight and their astonishment. This year he gets to run with sixteen, which is about as many as I can cope with should they all be in calf next year. It's probably as many as a single bull can cope with in a short bulling season, too. 
 
Golden yellow Highland bull

Cows come into season for about eighteen hours once every twenty-one days. Diuc will run with them for six weeks, covering two cycles for each cow. Six weeks is quite a short bulling period - there's always the risk he will miss a few - but it means that the calving season is equally short and so easy to manage. It limits the time when I can't go away for a couple of days to a literary festival, too. When we still had sheep here, I effectively missed more than a third of the year through lambing and calving, and had to frequently turn down invitations to festivals and other writing events.

When I bought the initial twelve breeding cows and a bull, over ten years ago now, they arrived all together and the bull - Fergus - had already begun his work. As I was still getting things sorted then, he ran with them for the whole summer, happy as a clam. On the plus side, all twelve were in calf. On the minus side, calving spanned from March all the way through to August. March is a problem as it's often too cold and wet, and the grass hasn't started to grow properly so the cows don't have good milk. July and August are fly-blown months, which isn't much fun when you're little and sticky. Ideally, we like to calve in May and June, as happened this year.

Diuc will get to run with the ladies until September 12th, and then it's back down to the in-bye field where the steers are at the moment. It's a hard life being a stud.

The other excitement, or annoyance, this month concerns poor Una Bhuidhe. Early last year she managed to damage one of her udders quite badly by jumping a barbed wire fence. Highland cows are no great respecters of fences in general, and Una has a bad record for being in the field where the grass appeared greener. With treatment, she healed up OK, but the damage to her teats meant we could no longer breed from her. I like to keep at least a couple of older, barren cows as companions for the youngsters when the bull is running with the breeding cows - a steadying influence if you like.
 
Golden yellow Highland cow in a cattle restraining cage

Una's a little young for retirement at only nine, but it's that or the knackerman, and I like her too much to do that to her. She's been on the back of the hill with last year's calves (including little Isha, her last one), and I noticed recently that her udder wound had reopened. I'm not sure how that happened, it's possible she might have tried to walk through a fence again, or a small scratch from some gorse got infected. Sometimes they kick out at a fly bite with their back legs and catch something fleshy. Not the best bit of design, the cow's udder. Whatever the cause, it needed treating, which required getting the vet out.
 
pale yellow highland cow calf

Una is now in the shed, undergoing a five day course of injected antibiotics and smearing of the udders with a bright yellow cream that stains everything it touches but is otherwise wonderful. By the time this newsletter goes out, she'll be back with her gang. Will she learn her lesson and stay the right side of the fence now? I'm not placing any bets.
 
Golden yellow Highland cow standing in a field

What I've read/listened to/watched

 

Brodie is a hitman for the Apostolis family, whose simple moral code is thrown into chaos when he is sent to kill the mysterious Karima. I listened to the audio of this, wonderfully narrated by Damian Lynch. Part road trip, part thriller, this is a strange beast of a thing that cracks along at a great pace and goes somewhere most unexpected at the end.

 

The third in Douglas Skeltons' excellent new series featuring fearless investigative reporter Rebecca Connolly. Set in and around Inverness, the story is satisfyingly twisty, as old gang rivalries that have bubbled under the surface for a decade boil over. Tautly written and tense, with a central character who takes shit off no-one. Highly recommended.
 

Another one for the audio, narrated by the ever-brilliant Chiwetel Ejiofor. Susannah Clarke's second novel is as strange as her first, and just as delightful. It tells an odd tale of a man who may or may not be called Piranesi, and who lives in a fantastical world of interconnected rooms filled with statues and occasionally flooded by the sea. 


I don't watch a lot of telly, but I needed something to break the monotony of endless edits and this popped up as a recommendation on Disney+ once Loki had finished. It's inspired by HG Wells rather than any kind of adaptation, set in contemporary France and England, and is quite astonishing. Very, very dark (season 1, episode 4, the end is as bleak as anything I've ever written), it's nevertheless gripping and brilliantly made. Plus it has Gabriel Byrne in it. There's a hard swerve from the end of season one into the start of season 2, but it's still a fascinating thing.
 

Regular readers will recognise Doug Johnstone as the author of many fine books, including the Skelfs series, which I've reviewed here before. He is also drummer for the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, and a damned fine musician to boot. Early last year he suffered a stroke, and much of this solo album reflects on that and his subsequent recovery. It's also bloody brilliant, with some cracking tunes that put me in mind of Idlewild, Frightened Rabbit and (for the cognoscenti) early Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. Smashing stuff!
Which is probably enough from me to satisfy even the most demanding of you. I also need to stop procrastinating and get on with the edits to All That Lives before my editor has a heart attack. 

If you've enjoyed this newsletter, thanks for reading. If you haven't, and are looking for the unsubscribe link, it's a bit further down. 

Until next time!
 
night picture of Dundee, lights glowing on the underside of the clouds
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