The artist Anuk Naumann talks to the writer Misha Herwin on her work.
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“Tell us something about yourself. I am an artist living and working in the Cotswolds. I split my time between working for exhibitions and working in my large garden.I love cooking, so try to process the fruit and vegetables which we grow organically…”
read the rest of the Q&A here: Anuk Naumann:Guest Blog
Misha Herwin on inspirations and celebrations.
On Saturday, I joined my mum, my daughter, my sister, niece and sister-in-law for afternoon tea at the Avon Gorge Hotel in Bristol. We were there to celebrate two big family birthdays, but one of the reasons I chose that hotel from all the others in Bristol is that the Avon Gorge is the model for The Grand in “Picking up the Pieces.”
Being brought up in Bristol and going to school just down the road, this hotel had always intrigued me. Clinging to the side of the Gorge it looks out on the Suspension Bridge and the river far below. I imagined it as a romantic place and conjured up an Art Deco Interior with a large Victorian conservatory, where my characters would meet and Elsa would break the devastating news that sets off the action of the novel.
In real life, however, it was very different. There was…
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Winter Downs blog tour day 3a : with Misha Herwin
Winter Downs: New Crime Novel by Jan Edwards
On a snowy winter morning Bunch Courtney rides out into the local woods and finds a dead body. Everything points to suicide, but the dead man is Johnny Frampton, a close friend ,and knowing what she does about him, Bunch is convinced that what she is looking at is a murder scene.
This is the opening premise of Winter Downs, a tightly plotted novel set in war time Britain. The 1940 are vividly brought to life and the main character, Bunch, is set to be one of my all time favourite heroines.
I love a strong woman protagonist, but have to admit to a horror of those feisty females in historical novels who transgress every social convention and behave like no woman of their era would have done. Bunch, however, is nothing like them. She is a product of her time and…
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Misha’s thoughts on friendship
Friends
I met my oldest friend when we were seven years old. I don’t know what it was that drew us together, but right from the start we had much in common. We certainly shared a vivid imagination. Break times were spent in our imaginary worlds, whether out in the Wild West, where we were breaking horses and riding bareback over the prairies, or in Regency England where we were the bad girls of the family always getting into trouble over some breach of decorum or other.
As we got older, we slept over at each other’s houses and on one memorable occasion spent New Year’s Eve at The Glen, a nightclub set in an old quarry. Quite why she ended up with such a bad hangover, I don’t remember. I do remember the following morning watching her eating scrambled eggs on toast, slathered in tomato ketchup. Every bite and…
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Misha thinking positively
Not an unusual state for a writer, but for once I eschewed the TLC and made myself have a good long think about the why this sort of situation provokes such an extreme reaction.
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Indie Book Shops – reposted from Misha Herwin’s blog
I love bookshops. I love the smell and the feel of them. At least I did until they all got to be great, big, huge chains, with no hidden corners or secret spaces where you could come upon mysterious books by writers you had never heard of.
In my childhood, George’s at the top of Park Street in Bristol, ranged over at least three, if not four stories. There were floors for fiction, religion, philosophy, mathematics and science and a whole basement given over to children’s books. You could spend a whole day there just browsing, discovering new authors, or getting lost in a book.
George’s however is long gone and scrolling through a list of independent bookshops in Bristol the only one I could find was the Durdam Down Bookshop. Family run for the past twenty years, unlike the others listed, it still sells new books. Not only that it plays…
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Or sending your loved ones out into the wide world. 
The book is written. It’s printed, it’s out there. Now it’s time to market, to Facebook, Tweet, Instagram and do everything and anything you can to promote your great work. It’s easy at first, or at least I get carried away on a wave of adrenaline and excitement and then gradually it all peters out.
I know I shouldn’t. I know I should keep up its profile, but by then I’ve got another project on the go. There’s a story that’s clamouring to be told and once that happens, like a neglectful mother I forget about the previous offspring and concentrate all my efforts on the new one.
What’s done is done. Like an adult child it no longer needs me. It has its own life that will go on even when I’m not here anymore. It no longer belongs to…
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