Time For a Change…

How odd! I visit my site and find my header picture has disappeared. So I quickly replace it with a new one of the Lake District.
This made me think about other things more personal. Time indeed for a change. I still want to write, but what? I have started a number of new novels for I am not short of ideas, but I don’t have the will to get on with them. They take such a huge chunk out of one’s life, especially when I work at snail’s pace. Time flies and I get more tired. My eyes get sore and I need to move my joints. And yet such things did not bother me when I was deeply engrossed in my novels. Yes, it is true that I am older, but is it just age? I need an incentive to do a large work. I need an incentive to do ANY work!
I live in a beautiful area (the photos are around here), perhaps it is time to let go and just ‘be’ until motivation returns. Something will turn up and I will be rested and ready — or grown too old and can’t be bothered!

 

(Since writing this I have completed another novel. It is called The Promise and will be published later this year (2012)

More Dress Designs From the 1950’s

Have been in the attic again and brought out a pile of drawings I did when I was freelance designing in the 1950’s (these are late 1950’s).

These pictures are not brilliant. The drawings were in pencil and I could hardly see the lines. So I photocopied them – the darkest I could use. Then I photographed and adjusted them to get reasonable pictures. It is quite obvious, so no one can say they are copies of other people’s designs. I have lots more – underwear, housecoats, nightwear, dresses, housecoats, separates.

I really enjoyed being a designer. I found it quite thrilling to have thousands of garments made from a single design. And to see them in shop windows and, occasionally, people wearing them. Now I have written about a dress designer of that period — her designing, her loves and hopes. See  Magpies Nest Publishing Books can be ordered directly from there by PayPal — post free in the UK. Or can be ordered through any good bookseller. Dress design can be done in minutes when inspired and the pattern in about an hour. I did not find it hard to sell them either. Writing novels takes many months but getting them published is a story in itself!

These are drawings I did when I had just turned sixteen in the late 1940’s. I found them in an old folder up in the attic. The pictures are elsewhere on this web site but not put together to form a video. Nice to have music background too.

Why write?

Sometimes writing pulls like a magnet. When I first started writing, I would be up at three in the morning, tapping at the keys. My design career inspired me and I was driven by the characters being formed in my imagination.

UPDATE SEPT. 2012: For those who are interested in dress design, especially post war Britain up to the eighties, my trilogy Awakening Love, Seduction, Checkmate, following the career, life and loves of a dress designer — June Armstrong (Rogers in both sequels) is to be shortly available in the USA through the publisher, Turquoise Morning Press. In the first book, she is just a young naive girl determined to make it to the top of her chosen career. The setting is genuine and closely resembles the factory where I worked, including the manner of designing, cutting and manufacture.
These sketches were done in the 1950’s — the era for Awakening Love. (UPDATE: The video was made when Dare Empire published the books. Turquoise Morning Press has now acquired the printing rights.)

English Lake District, home of artists and writers

 

Coniston in winter

The English Lake District has long been known for its writers and artists, including Wordsworth and Ruskin. Visitors come from all around the world to visit the houses where they lived, wrote or painted. The tradition goes on and many writers live and work in this area of outstanding Beauty.

Coniston Water in February - after the snow.

 

 

This is the area close to where I live and work. The beauty of where I live is a constant inspiration to my writing. Likewise the area where I lived as a child and a young married woman. For that was an area of clothing manufacture and, for me,  the trials and tribulations of factory work and struggling to be an established designer. Later on a teacher. That area was the Midlands, where I once dreamed of visiting the Lake District for a holiday. That is, if ever I had the money. Now I live here and think myself ‘rich’ indeed — for beauty of landscape is worth more than gold. Peace and tranquility worth more than the burden of wealth. This is my home, or at least close to where I live. From our market town of Ulverston we can see for many miles — out to sea across the bay, as well over to the Pennines and the far reaches of Cumbria.

Visit AG Press for details of the USA editions of When Angels Lie, Blazing Embers, and (shortly), Desire (all by Gladys Hobson) Magpies Nest Publishing for Gladys Hobson books published in Cumbria (the ‘home’ of the Lake District National Park) . My E-book, Awakening Love, (Stonehedge Publishing) can be found at Powell’s books and all major E-book sellers. Mythica Publishing (up in Bonnie Scotland) will shortly be publishing my books too.