The Colonsay bookshop has agreed to take forty copies of my new edition of Selkie; both Georgina and Christa who run the shop sounded delighted the book was back in print.
The Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay was the inspiration for this book. We'd had a decade of family holidays there when our children were young.
I loved the rugged landscape and the atmosphere of the past clinging to it -
the ruined village
-the old bedsteads built into the dry stone dykes.
I drew on the atmosphere of this remote place for my story -
even using some of the inhabitants, like the oysterman, as characters in the story.
Getting books to the island bookshop called for ingenuity. In the end I found friends going there in June who agreed to deliver them for me. So last week, on my way to a family wedding in Sussex, I was a book rep for a day, dropping books destined for Colonsay off in Woking before delivering more copies to the Steyning Bookshop.
