A NOTE FROM LOUISE:
I've been posting writer showcases at the end of every month since March 2023. The first writer I showcased was Ruth Loten, and I've published one per month almost every month since then, thirty-four in all, the most recent and final one being Jill Stanton-Huxton. The only month I missed was one this year when the writer I'd pencilled in withdrew, for reasons beyond her control.
I am finding that, much as I have loved showcasing these writers, I have also found it increasing time-consuming and quite tiring, so I've decided to take a break. I might start posting the showcases again later next year, or I might do an occasional one now and then. There are several writers I have wanted to showcase but haven't got round to yet.
One thing I have loved about the showcases is the range of writers I have been able to promote on my blog - writers of short stories, novelists, poets, children's writers, writers of memoir, biography, non-fiction and philosophy. There have been a wide range of subjects and genres from Christian writing, through sci-fi and domestic drama, mystery and crime, romance and fantasy, to discussion of the 'trolley problem', keeping healthy, and cultivating exotic fruit. Some writers have been published, both traditionally and through hybrid and self-publication, and many have won competitions or had work published in literary journals. Others are just starting out on their writing careers, or write purely for themselves. But they are all writers whose work I have enjoyed reading.
It has been a privilege to present their work to a new audience and I am happy to be able to do the little I can to highlight the fantastic literary work that is going on in quiet corners of this country - writers aren't all best-sellers, their work made into feature films or winning prestigious prizes. But there are many writers who are deeply committed to their work and who produce wonderful writing.
Jill Stanton-Huxton
I am pleased to showcase the wonderful writer, Jill Stanton-Huxton. I first became aware of her when I joined the Open University's online writing group, The Write Club. I bought a copy of her terrific children's novel, Harvey and the Moon Bus, and absolutely loved it, and later was honoured to be asked to beta-read, with several other people, her collection of lovely poems about the natural world, The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy. Therefore, it seems fitting that Jill should be the final showcase on the blog.
Biography
Jilly grew up in a
quintessentially English country village in the 1970s with her parents, twin
sister and two older sisters. The village, Shabbington, is about 10 miles from
Oxford, on the Buckinghamshire/ and Oxfordshire County border. It’s an ancient farming parish on the banks of the River Thame and mentioned
in the Domesday book of 1086.
She started writing nature poems as a child, and by the time she was in her early teens, she wanted to be a writer and imagined herself as a reporter for the local newspaper. However, this didn’t happen and she ended up working as a Librarian, Information Officer and finally a Recruitment Co-ordinator for the Open University.
Then, one day, while on holiday with her sister who was sketching a beautiful coastal scene, Jill picked up a pen and
paper and started composing a poem. It was a real eureka moment because she instantly remembered how much she loved writing; how much she'd missed it - and
that she would never stop again!
Since then, Jill has had non-fiction articles, short stories and poems published in magazines, and local/regional newspapers. She's been shortlisted in The Writing Magazine's Open Poetry Competition, won a ghost story competition, and was also the winner of the Buckinghamshire Family History Society Alan Dell Memorial Award for 2013. She also won a competition in The Countryman magazine.It was for a front cover and she painted a style in watercolor.
She published her first children's book, Harvey and the Moon Bus, in 2018, and her debut poetry collection, based on the natural world, The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy a few years ago.
https://www.jillstantonhuxton.com/
Iced Doughnuts
I hated swimming as a child, from the moment I had to undress, put on my washed out swimming costume and
stand underneath the drizzly shower, feet in a puddle of flotsam. Sally, my
twin, loved it.
I hated
the water trough you had to walk through to get into the main pool – I could
feel the verrucas trying to cling to my feet, like clams clinging to rocks at
the seaside. Sally would run through it like a buffalo at a watering hole.
One day, as usual, I was sitting on the side
of the pool dangling my feet in the water and watching the older swimmers with
their strange crumpled bodies, when I realised I hadn’t heard Sally splashing around
for a while. I looked around the busy pool
and spotted her at the deep end floating happily in her rubber ring. When she saw me looking at her she started
waving her arms frantically in the air.
And then she disappeared. I couldn’t
understand where she had gone at first, then I realised what had happened. Sally had fallen through her rubber ring. She
was drowning.
At first, I just watched the rubber ring
bobbing up and down on its own in the water and thought it looked like an iced
doughnut. I love iced doughnuts.
I
don’t remember catapulting myself off the side of the pool and frantically
doggy paddling towards her. I do remember trying to spit out the foul water I gulped
as I struggled to swim and breathe at the same time. I didn’t know Dad had
dived into the water like a Superhero to save Sally or that the life guard had
launched himself into the water like an underwater missile. It was only when I was
sitting safely next to Sally in the First Aid area, teeth chattering cold, that
I realised what had happened.
That was the first time in my life I could remember my twin sister being quiet for more than a few minutes.
After that incident I didn’t sit at the side of the pool – I doggy paddled
around in the water with Sally as best I could...all the time dreaming about
iced doughnuts.
The Tale of an English Country Tortois
It was the 10th
May 1976, I was twelve years old and I was in
I would often write letters home while we were on our two
weeks holidays - something that the younger generation would find strange in
our social media and texting age. I would sit at the writing desk in the hotel
bedroom and using the hotel’s headed paper would write up the details of the
day – often including trivia such as the meal we all had that evening.
Sadly, many of these letters have been lost over the years –
but one significant letter remains in my possession and it ends with the
following sentence: please ask Grampy if he would make me a tortoise hutch
because I am having a tortoise about the end of May, or before, and I need
somewhere for it to sleep. Thank you!
I’ve always loved animals,
and as a child I would constantly pester my parents into letting me have a pet.
However, my parents had my two older siblings, my twin and I to look after and
quiet rightly considered having pets as just more hard work to add to our already
hectic family home.
Eventually, though my persistence paid of and they agreed to
let me have a tortoise. After all you couldn’t get an easier pet to look after
really, could you - they hibernate during the winter and when they are awake
they aren’t exactly racing around the place. What could be easier?
Back in the 1970s Mediterranean tortoises were popular pets having been imported into the
So, shortly after our
return home (and when Grampy had made a hutch) ‘Ruffles’ arrived from the local
pet shop. However, it wasn’t long before we realised just how mischievous the
new member of our family really was!
My friend’s tortoise, Tina, had a hole drilled into the back
of her shell, which was attached to a long piece of string so she couldn’t
escape from her garden. We didn’t like this idea and anyway we had a very large
garden and worked out that if we put Ruffles in the middle of the lawn it took
him about thirty minutes to reach the flower borders - which he liked too
burrow into and hide. So, as long as one of us remembered the time this worked
really well. Inevitably, though we were often distracted when playing with our
friends and as a result Ruffles often went ‘missing’ only to be found later
hidden amongst the borders.
Fortunately, we always managed to find him before nightfall,
except on one occasion – when he went on his ‘adventure of a lifetime’. It was
a warm summer’s evening and we had searched for him amongst his favourite
haunts without luck. Eventually as the light faded to dusk, reluctantly we gave
up looking and hoped that he would reappear in the morning for his breakfast.
However, early the next morning Mum answered the front door
to a very annoyed neighbour who said she had woken up to find Ruffles in her
strawberry patch – and he had eaten nearly all of her freshly ripened
strawberries! At first we thought she had mistaken him for another ‘local’
tortoise as she lived at the other end of a long road running through the
bottom end of the village. Ruffles would have had to have walked on the actual
road (as there were no verges on either side) to get to her house. We also worked
out that at his fastest pace it would have taken him several hours to reach her
garden – surely he couldn’t have smelt freshly ripened strawberries from that
distance? When we explained this to her she said she had left him at the ‘scene
of the crime’ so we could see for ourselves. So, off we all went, the neighbour
marching down the road in front of us – and sure enough, when we reached her
garden, there he was still happily munching on the last of her strawberry crop.
After a lot of apologising,
and promising this would never happen again, we retrieved the ‘intruder’ and went
home. To compensate for her loss, later that morning Mum went in to the local market
in town and bought her several punnets of fresh strawberries.
As the long hot summers turned to autumn each year we always
had a heated discussion about where we should put Ruffles to hibernate. For the
first few years that we had him we put him at the back of the airing cupboard,
tucked up safely in a box of fresh hay. This may sound strange nowadays, with
centrally heated houses, but our bungalow only had an open fire and a few
storage heaters so was often chilly in the winter months. However, even though
the airing cupboard wasn’t all that warm he always woke up several times during
the first few winters, so one year we decide to try a new location - on top of
my parent’s wardrobe! Needless to say my parents were woken up several times during
the night as he noisily moved around in his box.
Finally, one year we decided to put him in the garden shed
to hibernate – thinking that the bungalow must be too warm for him and that all
he needed was a cooler environment. Sadly, that winter was one of the coldest
on record for many years and there was heavy snowfall throughout most of the
country. In fact our village was cut off for several days and I vividly
remember my Dad, twin sister and I walking to the next village (about three
miles away) to stock up on supplies.
I remember thinking about
Ruffles during the cold, dark nights and hoping he would be okay. And as usual during
those months I continued to inspect the box to see if he had woken up - but for
the first time since we had him he slept through the whole winter.
However, when spring finally arrived there was no sign of
him coming out of hibernation. It was only when our friend told us that Tina,
her own tortoise, had woken up that we all began to worry. Finally, one day
when we arrived home from school, Grampy told us that, sadly, Ruffles had died
and he had buried him in his favourite place - amongst the flower borders.
It is now some forty years since that very sad day – but Ruffles
has never been forgotten; we often talk about the ‘Strawberry Gate’
incident…the day a mischievous English Country tortoise went on his adventure
of a lifetime.
The End
The Whisper
On the edges of the riverbank
in the nettled fringes
and shallow soaked waters
there’s a whisper of autumn calling.
It’s tangled in the willows
lemony lime leaves
summer washed and watermarked
and in the rooted dampness
of tethered reeds
clinging to summer’s free spirit.
Dancing over purple flinted pebbles
and shallow soaked waters
there’s a whisper of autumn calling
on the edges of the riverbank.
The Heart of the Matter
Sam put down the newspaper he’d been trying to read for the last twenty minutes; it was no good, it just wasn’t sinking in. He couldn’t concentrate. He looked at his watch, again. He had to get it over with soon - it was beginning to drive him mad.
He looked across the room at Lucy, relaxing on the sofa
reading her magazine, with Millie, the cat, purring away on her lap. She had no
idea of the turmoil he was in. No idea
at all.
‘Fancy a cup of tea, Darling?’ he said, trying to make his
voice sound cheerful.
Lucy looked up from her magazine.
‘We only had one about an hour ago, didn’t we?’ she
replied. ‘Are you okay, Sweetheart, you don’t seem yourself today?’
‘I’m fine.’ He shrugged. ‘Just felt like another cup of
tea, that’s all.’ If he was honest though, he could hardly bear to be in the
same room as her at the moment; it just seemed to add to the tension.
Lucy watched him as he sprang of the sofa and disappeared
towards the kitchen; something was definitely wrong with him today, she thought. He seemed so restless. Usually, he was happy
to sit and read the Saturday newspapers - in fact often he would sit on the
sofa all morning deeply engrossed in all the latest news. If he’d been a child, she’d have thought he’d had too much fizzy drink and chocolate and was on some
sort of sugar high. Oh, and now she thought about it, what was this tea thing? He never made tea. He didn’t normally like tea – it was all a
bit weird.
Sam switched the kettle on and stood looking out the
kitchen window. He couldn’t believe it was so late. It only seemed like a few
hours ago since they’d had breakfast. Oh god, he had to do it soon. If he left
it much longer, they’d be at the restaurant and he wasn’t going to do it there
in front of complete strangers. Why was this so difficult? He’d been messing
about all day trying to muster up the courage.
He felt something rubbing against his leg and looked down
to see Millie arching her back and curling her long bushy tail around him. He
bent down to pick her up and she started purring in his ear. They say that cats
have a sixth sense and Sam was sure Millie could tell something was wrong with
him today.
‘It’s okay, Millie,' he whispered. 'Everything is going to be
all right; no need for you to worry.' He stroked her under her chin and put her
down; as usual, she went straight over to her food bowl to see if anything new
had appeared in it.
Lucy could hear Sam mumbling to himself in the kitchen and
wondered if she should go and ask him if everything was okay, but then she knew
he liked to be left alone if he was worried about something. He always said he
liked to sort things out for himself. She guessed he got that from his father.
All the same, she was beginning to think that something was
seriously wrong. She put her magazine down
and sighed - what if he wasn’t happy with their relationship anymore? Then she remembered they’d had a few arguments
recently, about silly things, things that she thought hadn’t really mattered.
But maybe they had to Sam. He’d also been
putting in a lot of extra hours at work lately, due to cut-backs - or at least
that’s what he’d told Lucy.
Sam looked over at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes
to six; he couldn’t afford to leave it any longer.
‘Pull yourself together, man,’ he said, trying to psyche himself up. ‘Do it now, now, NOW.’
He took a deep breath to slow his racing heart and walked back into the living room.
‘Darling, I’ve got something to ask you,’ he said, wiping
his clammy hands on his jeans.
Lucy looked up at him; she noticed he looked pale and anxious.
‘What is it, Sweetheart?’ she said, bracing herself for bad
news.
‘Um, well, um, will you marry me!’
Her heart suddenly felt like it had missed several beats. She thought he’d said marry me. Would you marry me? The words tumbled round inside her head. She couldn’t think properly. She couldn’t say anything. The only thing she seemed to be able to do was look at Sam, who now appeared to be even more anxious than before. No, he couldn’t have said that, she thought, he looks too worried. It must have been the tea thing, again. He must have asked if I wanted another cup of tea. She took a deep breath and stroked Millie who had just jumped up on her lap.
'Pardon, Sweetheart?' she said, smiling at him. 'What did you say?'
The End
A
Messenger of Hope
I saw her in the dusk light
a shadow between the trees.
I sensed something watching me,
then the snap of a twig,
rustling of leaves
and there she was
those large innocent eyes
as bright as the north star.
A silhouette so beautiful,
it was as if every line,
every contour of her body
had been sculptured
In the hands of an old master.
And for a moment,
in the stillness
before she turned and disappeared
into the night
I imagined she was a messenger
from folklore, myth or legend.
A messenger of hope.
Aunty's Apron
It
hung behind the kitchen door,
a
fine powder puff of flour sprinkled over it;
like
the first snowfall of winter.
This
was the apron we all remembered her in.
From
breakfast to bed time she wore it,
like
a skin she had grown into .
A
part of her. As much as the tub of hand cream
that
travelled with her around the house
and
sat like a glass of fine whisky
beside
her armchair in the evenings.
The
house was nearly empty now.
It
was almost time to leave;
to
walk out the door of comings and goings one last time.
The
apron was still there,
behind
the kitchen door;
hanging
like a ghost that nobody wanted to face.
******
And finally we come to The Big
Interview, in which Jill kindly
answers writing-related
questions and lets us into
some of her writing secrets...
1.
How old were you
when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey
?
I started writing nature poems as a child. Family
life was often noisy and hectic, so I would grab a book and my writing pad and
pen and find a quiet part of our large garden, usually under an old apple tree.
I could sit there for hours. I devoured books. My favourites were The
Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair, both by Enid Blyton. They were
just magical. In my early teens I read a lot of Dick Francis, Desmond Bagley,
Robert Ludlum and Agatha Christie. It was around this time I knew I wanted to
be a writer, I imagined myself being a reporter on The Thame Gazette,
the local newspaper.
2.
Does the place
you live mm have any impact on your writing?
Yes. Several
of the poems in my poetry Collection The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy were
composed in Pembrokeshire, visiting my husband’s parents. ‘’Rooks on A Wire’
was written one autumn when I went to close the curtains in our bedroom. It was
dusk and I noticed there were lots of Rooks In the field near the bungalow. They
were sitting on the telegraph wires, chattering. l watched them for quite some
time until, just moments before it was completely dark, they all stretched their wings and flew away over
the field. I watched them every evening. It was magical.
.
3.
Do you have any
advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write?
I would recommend
doing a creative writing course. It really improved my writing skills and made
me more confident in my own ability. I
studied with the Open University for my Diploma in Creative Writing. I loved
it.
4.
What do you think
about getting feedback on your writing from other writers and/or non-writers?
I think it’s a good idea. I had feedback from
writing friends and non-writing friends
with both of my books.
5.
Where do you get
your ideas from?
My writing ideas come from anywhere - things I see, or hear. For example, the idea for my children’s book Harvey and the Moon Bus came to me from our naughty Norwegian Forest Cat, Macavity. I walked into our local shop one morning and overheard the owner talking to a customer about a big fluffy grey cat who often sat outside his shop; he said it was almost as if he was waiting for something. I went back home thinking what he could be waiting for, and a bus to the Moon just popped into my head.
6.
Beyond your
family and your writing, what other things do you do?
I dabble in lots of things. I’m learning to play the piano, practice yoga and mindfulness, paint in water colour and crochet (badly). I also like gardening and walking.
7. Are you interested in history and if so does it impact
on your writing?
Yes, particularly
family history and nostalgia. I’ve had several articles published on the
subject. I did a great deal of research on my two great-uncles, Joe and
William, who fought and died in the first world war. I entered it In The
Buckinghamshire Family History Society Alan Dell Memorial Award and was
delighted when I won it.
******
Thank you very much, Jill, for such an entertaining and insightful showcase.
******
This will be the last Writer Showcase on my blog for some time, as I need a break. However, I have several more people who might like to be showcased so I might do occasional showcases in the future.
******
So far in this series, I’ve showcased the following writers:
Ruth Loten – March 2023
Jane Langan – March 2023
Beck Collett – April 2023
Ron Hardwick – June 2023
L.N.Hunter – July 2023
Katherine Blessan – August 2023
Jill Saudek – September 2023
Colin Johnson – October 2023
Sue Davnall – November 2023
Alain Li Wan Po – December 2023
Lily Lawson – January 2024
Philip Badger – February 2024
Glen Lee – March 2024
DHL Hewa - April 2024
Tonia Trainer - May 2024
Mike Poyzer – June 2024
Judith Worham - July 2024
Chrissie Poulter - August 2024
Adele Sullivan - September 2024
Lin De Laszlo - October 2024
Wendy Heydorn - November 2024
Elisabeth Basford - December 2024
Karen Honnor - January 2025
Sharon Henderson - February 2025
Gae Stenson - March 2026 [collaboration]
Dr Trefor Stockwell - March 2025 [collaboration]
Karen Downs-Barton
Pavitra Menon
Suzanne Burn
Cinnomen Matthews
Mai Black
Nicola Walpole
Nastasya Parker
Jill Stanton-Huxton
[35 altogether]
You can find all these showcases by scrolling back through the material on this blog.
