All Things Evelyn

Over the past ten days I’ve enjoyed three Christmas lunches, one Christmas dinner – all delicious – and a champagne breakfast.  So I’m going to have to fast from now until Christmas Day in the hope that I can enjoy my planned turkey dinner and sherry trifle (I’ve never been one for Christmas pudding) followed by mince pies.

 Because I’ve been eating out so often my freezer, which needs defrosting, is full, so over the Christmas and New Year period I’m going to have to eat my way through its contents before I can defrost it then start the restocking.  That, and getting on with my next and sixth Prior’s Ford book, which has to be completed by the end of March, is going to be my priority from now on.

 The New Year decisions are still to be made.  One has to be to stop sending Christmas cards because I can’t afford the time or the postage now.  As from 2012 I will make donations to charity instead.

 Another will have to be to learn to say ‘no’ to people, because I keep running out of time for the things that I want to do.  I’ve been trying to keep that resolution for years, and so far I’ve failed.  Let’s hope that 2012 is my year for it.

 As for other people’s resolutions – that’s not an effort.   I suggest that the Governments in England and Scotland resolve to hire a group of experienced and capable housewives to supervise their expenses; women who can ask them, for instance, to explain exactly how each claim will benefit their constituents.  That should cut every expense sheet down to an acceptable amount and please the tax-payers, though not the no-longer-honourable politicians.

 People who design things like shampoo bottles that only open under firm pressure to a tiny slit, or hinged shower gel bottles that need a lot of effort to open, or toilet flushes requiring a firm finger-press into the wall to activate them should think of people like me who suffer from arthritic joints and need help to open their daft ideas.  I’d love to give their hands a brisk going over with a hammer then watch them try to open their designs.  Bet they can’t.

 Television bosses who insist on a voice-over about the next programme while the credits are running or, worse still, rush the credits along at breakneck speed so that I can’t read who played what part, or shrink them to unreadable size in order to advertise a coming delight I don’t want to know about.

 I’m not even going to write about bankers who in the main, like many of our politicians, have turned from people with honour to people with absolutely none, but end instead with a word on the politically-correct brigade, who in my view are doing to the UK what flesh-eating diseases have dome to some hospital patients. I’d love to see them all banished to a desert island where they can be left to bore each other to death.

 I’d like to see an end to this silly ‘celeb’ crush that the media have created for the bears of little brain among us.  I’ve no interest in a celebrity’s private life, only in whether what they do is of interest or value.

 To everyone not among the above, I wish a very Merry Christmas and a much better New Year than we have been enjoying for some considerable time.

Hello, and welcome to the new All Things Evelyn website, which has been updated to encompass my two writing names, Evelyn Hood – that’s the real me, folks – and Eve Houston.

Eve Houston came about when my last publisher, Little Brown, asked me to take a break from my usual family sagas and try a modern village series.  As I love a challenge, and I have always believed that writers should be able to switch genres, I did as they asked, and the village of Prior’s Ford in Dumfries and Galloway was born.

Unfortunately my publishers then decided – in fact, insisted – that the series be written under another name, as only Evelyn Hood readers would want to read a book by Evelyn Hood.  Given that the jackets alone would indicate that the village books were not family sagas, I disagreed with them, pointing out that some Evelyn Hood fans, at least, might give the new series a try, and may even decide to stay with it as I am known for my good characterisation, and the author was still the same me, but was over-ruled.  As a result, I lost all my Evelyn Hood readers, who probably thought that I had died as I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone who Eve really was.

I was, of course, proved to be right and the first three books didn’t sell as well as the publishers had hoped,  because nobody had ever heard of Eve Houston and in this extremely sad ‘age of the groupie’ an amazing number of people need to recognise names before they can bring themselves to trust the product.  So I was sacked, punished for the crime of being right – or perhaps for the crime of showing the publishers up as being wrong, who knows?

Sadly the fourth village book began to catch public attention, but too late as it was my last book with Little Brown.  The fifth village book, Mystery in Prior’s Ford, was published in hardback by Severn House at the end of September, but unfortunately again, they tend to concentrate on selling to libraries, so anyone who wants to keep reading the series will have to get Mystery and the book I’m writing now from their local library.  Some copies can be found on Amazon UK and a paperback version is coming out round about March of next year, which may again be available on Amazon.

At the moment the Eve Houston website is about to close down, and both names will then be moved to this site, All Things Evelyn.

Watch this space for more – and more frequent – blogs.  And don’t forget – I’d love to hear from you if you feel like sending an email.