Newsletter: A Bumper Bundle Of Fun
Paying it forward
It’s December. Already? Yikesaroonie. I realised when I was walking home from work the other night and everywhere was covered in fairy lights. Oh, and snow. Those were two key giveaways.
It had been a hectic day at the cinema. I had a private hire for a kids’ birthday party, and showed Home Alone. They all had fun, as attested to by how much cake I had to vacuum up afterwards. Quite a different audience for the following film: André Rieu’s White Christmas. Lots of smiling faces afterwards again. Both films threw up some kind of technical problem, but as I would have said if anyone had noticed: the sign of a competent projectionist isn’t that nothing ever goes wrong (because: technology), but that they can fix it when it does. At the end of the day when I locked up the building and went home, I knew I’d made people happy.
I won’t talk too much about my writing. Next year I have lots of plans, some exciting news (I hope), and some book releases I am looking forward to getting into the hands of my fans. Stay tuned, as they say!
The “Paying it forward” bit
As regular readers know, I like to promote the work of other people or businesses whenever I can. Authors I work with, people I respect, and so on. So I’m going to do a few mini shout outs.
Marisha Tapera
Marisha is an amazing professional voice-over artist and narrator, whose voice I can listen to for ages! She’s also a supportive friend. If you want a voice artist for a project then check out her website. She did a brilliant job narrating the audiobook for Lost Solace: currently 15% off!
Alyson Tyler
A yoga-teaching friend of mine. She’s just done a blog post about chocolate meditation, which sounds like my kind of mindfulness! She’s also launched a one-off Yuletide Yoga video library which is £10 for a month, in case you want to get bendy (and work off some of the chocolate you might be eating in the next thirty days …).
Ethical Consumer
I find Ethical Consumer to be really useful for knowing which companies and products are doing good, and which to avoid, along with why (environmental, political, who owns them and so on). It's one of the key ways to make sure that when you spend money, you're supporting the good guys, not the bad guys. The ethical scores are broken down into categories so you can focus on the ones that are more important to you. Ethical Consumer offers gift subscriptions which includes an Olive Tree Sponsorship:
"The Trees for Life programme helps to establish a relationship between over 3,000 Palestinian farmers and the fair trade movement. Solidarity organisations like Ethical Consumer raised fund for seedlings to be distributed to farmers in over 30 villages in the West Bank. The Trees for Life Committee targets young families, starter farmers, small farmers, women farmers and farmers who have been impacted by the Israeli wall, or field or tree destruction by the Israeli military. During the 2020-21 planting season, our gift subscriptions resulted in 735 organic saplings being distributed throughout the West Bank.”
Note that I don’t get any kind of commission! I only ever recommend people or companies I genuinely respect, for free.
As ever, my own books make great presents (you’ll find links to paperbacks as well via Books2read, or you can order them from your local bookshop or library). If you want to turn a book into a signed copy, you can buy signed bookplates straight from the House of Drinkwater. If you are lucky, Dolly will leave a paw print on one.
You can also buy yourself or a friend a subscription to my newsletter for full access to every post (details).
Some subscribers choose to leave a note as to why they subscribed, and those always make me smile. For example, this:
Whereas Dick Harding’s message was:
"Support because my uncle's name was Karl Drinkwater. Karl was in the Navy on a ship that was sunk by a German Uboat in October 31, 1941. He was 19. It is thought by many our family came from Wales but I see you are from Scotland. We came from Canada so it could also have been French Canadian changing the name Boileau to Drinkwater to avoid prejudice. Probably most like is Wales but both possible."
As I said to Dick in my reply:
“I'm originally from Manchester, and there were quite a few Drinkwaters in the north. In fact, the 70s actress Carol Drinkwater is unrelated but was from near me (she's now a travel writer) and I used to tell kids at school she was my auntie (a total fib). I had only ever heard of one other Karl Drinkwater, a buff New Zealand actor who was in the Spartacus TV series. And once I started writing books he changed his name to Karlos, perhaps to differentiate himself from me so people didn't search for his name then think he looked weedy and pale! When I used to teach international students at Aberystwyth University they would often burst out laughing when they saw my name on a presentation. I suppose that saying my name alone counted as an ice breaker. Though as a kid I wanted to change it to James Bond.”
A photo to finish. Available now, my new venture:
Spotted somewhere on the motorway south towards Manchester. Photo sent to me by my Welsh greengrocer in Scotland.
Feel free to reply to this email! Photos of my books in fun places; your cat/dog/rabbit/anything; links to reviews of my books; what you’d like to see in my newsletter; questions; massive cheques; boxes of vegan chocolates. All welcome. :-)
So, whatever you celebrate (or don’t) this month, I wish you peace and love. Have a joyous Bodhi Day (8th), Kwanzaa (26th until January 1st), Christmas (25th), Hanukkah (18th-26th), or Yule (21st until January 1st - hello fellow Pagans!) I hope we see more peace and equality next year, less violence and inequality. All life has value, and it exceeds any amount of money. Bright blessings.