A Gentle Reminder

There has been much talk about Shades of Appley Green in recent months and perhaps some of you would like a simple reminder about my first two novels, also set in the village of Appley Green. They are connected but each one stands alone. You could read either one first.

Gypsies Stop tHere on Amazon as paperback and Kindle

Will uprooting herself from London to live in the English countryside help Kay escape guilt-ridden memories of her husband’s death? Far from finding a quiet life, she is caught up in an age-old village conflict where passionate opinions on Romany Gypsy Travellers divide the local people.

A young woman, Lena, enters her life, unwittingly putting Kay’s plans on hold. Kay struggles to not only come to terms with her emotional past but also to resolve Lena’s problems, those of the village and the Gypsies. And another relationship blossoms that she would never have dreamed of … 

No Gypsies Served on Amazon as paperback and Kindle

Two years have passed since Kay successfully campaigned for the Appley Green Gypsy Site, and four years since her husband was murdered. Life in the village was going so well, until the phone call and letter. Then comes the disastrous site opening. Worst of all, Dunstan, whom she realises is her best friend and ally, is giving her the cold shoulder for some unknown reason.

Dunstan is taking an emotional trip down memory lane, into childhood as a Gypsy on the road, and his eventual break from his people. Why is he so angry with Kay that he keeps away from her? Chances of a longed for reconciliation look slim …

The two books had many lovely reviews in addition to those on the Amazon web site. I will give you just a couple, for now.

I spoke on BBC Radio Oxford – it was a programme called The Write Lines hosted by broadcaster and writer, Sue Cook. She later read my two Gypsy books.

 “Few of us even try to understand gypsies and their way of life. Our knee-jerk reaction usually goes no further than ‘not in my backyard’, as I discovered first hand when a family of gypsies arrived in a village near where I live last year. The immediate reaction among the residents was a mixture of alarm and resentment.

In Miriam Wakerly’s Gypsies Stop tHere  and its sequel No Gypsies Served  it’s refreshing to see gypsies portrayed as individual people like the rest of us, making their way in life the best way they can. Reading this compelling story brings home the fact that it’s perfectly possible for gypsies to be accepted successfully into our communities.

Wakerly’s books do a wonderful job in helping to promote understanding where there is ignorance and tolerance where there is bigotry. I recommend them heartily.”

 Scarlett de Courcier found me in a Waterstones shop one day and hhere’s what followed:

(Click here!) Bohemiacademia

(Extract)

“Gypsies Stop tHere gripped me from the first page and carried me all the way through to the end on a wave of ‘I don’t want to put this down’. And then I picked up No Gypsies Served and had the same feeling all the way through that one.”

Scarlett even placed my two books as her 2^nd best choice for 2010 and, boy, has she read some books, and, oh yes, she can be very critical of books sometimes!

“Really, really important books. Really, really beautifully written. I think they should be on every school’s curriculum.”

Maybe you would like to give Gypsies Stop tHere and No Gypsies Served a try and, if you like them, add your own comment on Amazon. That would be amazing and I will look out for what you have to say!

Another lovely review of Shades of Appley Green!

For those who have not seen it already, I was delighted to find this lovely review on Lou Graham's Blog You will see she has also reviewed my first two novels,  Gypsies Stop tHere and No Gypsies Served  and seems to have loved all of them. This lady gobbles up books like there's no tomorrow and I find my books in very good company, so I am immensely proud of these positive comments from a reviewer who had not met with my novels until very recently.
Then she reviewed all THREE of them. That says quite a lot in my book (ha-ha).

Here's an extract from Lou Graham's Blog:

'Miriam writes with a gorgeous flow and a great depth to her characters with her books and whilst they won’t have your windows steaming and champagne flowing, they are very addictive and wonderful to read!
Shades of Appley Green gives you faith in human kindness! Another deeply engaging read by Miriam Wakerly'

Well, I never promised you wild sex and bottles of bubbly, now did I?

Lou Graham is a book reviewer on Love a Happy Ending and Famous Five Plus - both wonderful places for readers, booklovers and writers around the world!

A Time and a Place

Do you like to read books where you can pinpoint the place? Does it annoy you if you cannot tell when the story takes place?

Someone once told me that the year should be left vague so the book does not become ‘dated’. Really? For historical fiction the era is, by definition, essential. To be topical, Call the Midwife is, importantly, true life story of the 1950s. Ian McEwan’s Saturday is a specific day in 2003, and A Week in December (2007) by Sebastian Faulks reflects society as it was then. On the other hand, fantasy or science fiction might be anytime in the future, anywhere, bounded only by the author’s and reader’s imagination.

I can only assume this person was thinking of a particular genre where a book packed with eternal truths could belong to the ‘here and now’, keep fresh for a few years and not exceed its sell by date. But to keep this illusion, so many references would have to be excluded. I struggled with this. Almost always I like to be clear on the time – and the place.

When writing Gypsies Stop tHere I deliberately made it fairly obvious, eluding to Tony Blair and George W Bush for example, when it was written – about 2007. Laws relating to Gypsies and Travellers and relationships between them and mainstream society are pivotal to the story. It presents a snapshot in time; some aspects have stood still, others have changed – like the government! Maybe, as time passes it will mature, not become out of date. As the real-life situation evolves, and perceptions shift, I hope people will be intrigued to see how unbelievable some things were, even five years ago. As it says in the notice that the activist, young Natalie, puts up on Appley Green notice board, ‘How will future generations look back …? Are we any better?’ Think of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and, more recently, The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Since writing this, my first novel, Channel 4’s Big Fat Gypsy Weddings have come and, fortunately, gone; Dale Farm in Essex hit the headlines all over the world; many Gypsies have published their own memoirs. When I researched and wrote this book I had academic studies; real life encounters and a few scarce books to work with (all listed in the Bibliography). We have indeed moved on and I hope that will add to the interest in reading Gypsies Stop tHere and No Gypsies Served now and in the future.

As for Shades of Appley Green– this is set in the present day, for sure, around 2011. It is not a documentary, it is meant to be entertaining, but again it does reflect some current social issues, the plight of many old folk, the way single parenthood can be a struggle and how traffic can seriously affect the way a village functions as a community. These themes are not the story but do provide the background. In five years’ time all these views of village life may have changed, while human emotions stay pretty much the same.

Of course the location matters! No argument there, surely. Classics like Wuthering Heights, Lorna Doone; Thomas Hardy and Sir Walter Scott and thousands of other writers prove that. With their strong and wonderful sense of place, I like to think of Anita Shreve’s many brilliant novels with their robust setting in New Hampshire, each book set in a different era but often the same stretch of coast, the same building. This adds a whole new dimension to each of her novels, in my view.

I hope to make a series of novels set in Appley Green, where each one will connect with the others. Some familiar characters will pop up. There is a raft of characters in the first one of this series, Shades of Appley Green – after all, it is a village! They have lived curious lives but cannot all be developed in one story and I hope each book will leave people wanting more. That’s the theory anyway! I certainly want to find out more about them which makes me just itch to get on with the next book.

Gypsies Stop tHere is about to be reprinted and is available on Kindle. No Gypsies Served is available as paperback. Shades of Appley Green is a Kindle book will be available as paperback in about two weeks time but can be pre-ordered. All three are set in Appley Green, as it happens.

Gypsies Stop tHere on Amazon       No Gypsies Served on Amazon  Shades of Appley Green on Kindle

Big Fat Gypsy Weddings not so bad?

SINCE WRITING THIS POST I SAW THIS! Jake Bowers speaking for the Romany Gypsy community: http://bit.ly/h9TldF on Daybreak.

I may be revising my view of Channel 4 documentary, dubbed ‘mockumentary’. I hope it really does help relations between Gypsies and non-Gypsies, rather than make for more bad feeling. Excellent representation on BBC Breakfast show this week. http://bbc.in/e0kK5J

For booklovers interested in an easy and entertaining read on Gypsies and Travellers today, and our relationships with them, you may like to take a look at my novels. They are set in the fictitious English village, Appley Green. Many of the issues that are being raised in Channel 4's programme are woven into the stories.

When I began my research 6 or 7 years ago nobody was talking about Gypsies or Travellers very much. From their history to the modern-day shortage of stopping-places, I realised I had found a fascinating subject that few people understood. I visited many Gypsy sites at places close by, including: Chobham, Hartley Wintney, Leatherhead, Ash and, indeed, the famous Irish Traveller site, Westway, in London. I spoke to a lot of Gypsies and Travellers as well as reading books by professors who have done the same thing. I attend Gypsy and Traveller meetings and hear about their problems first-hand. I also did and still do a lot of thinking!

My novels have been described as an ‘easy way in’ for a non-Gypsy. Bridie Page, A Romany Gypsy, with Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group said, “Miriam has captured the essence of Romany/Traveller life managing to merge old and new seamlessly. A right riveting read!”

Sue Cook, Broadcaster and Writer, “Wakerly’s books do a wonderful job in helping to promote understanding where there is ignorance and tolerance where there is bigotry. I recommend them heartily.”

Gypsies Stop tHere (2008) and No Gypsies Served (2010). Click on some links to find out more:
Amazon http://amzn.to/hwfhdj and http://amzn.to/gXhX7h

Reviews: http://bit.ly/cBwzMK 2 reviews on http://onevodrom.blogspot.com/ (do a search on my name, they come up straight away)

http://tinyurl.com/ygymoae

http://www.strongmanpublishing.com/

I am now actually looking forward to the next episode - but hope I don't have to do another U-turn. Am going to a Gypsy and Traveller Forum in a week's time and will find out how the community are feeling about the series by then. At the moment, they are not happy. See Travellers Times http://bit.ly/fZPBHR

Fiction Slips into Reality

It really is stranger than fiction when fiction becomes reality. Last week I felt as if I had stepped into a scene from my own novel Gypsies Stop tHere.

The public meeting was to discuss proposals for an inevitable development at Deepcut. The plan is for a ‘rural village’ utilising the footprint of the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut following its disbandment in a couple of years’ time. The process has reached the stage of inviting responses to Surrey Heath Borough Council Draft Strategic Planning Document (SPD) and four design options are offered; briefly linear, ‘one-heart’, ‘two heart’ or High Street based.

The key issues were predictable and understandable: traffic, traffic, traffic, roads, traffic and various pros and cons of the new development. Naturally, as local people, we are extremely anxious about the impact that additional housing, shops and amenities will have on our area. Anyone reading this who is interested in the details can of course follow on http://surreyheath-residents.co.uk/2010/12/16/deepcut-development-public-meeting-a-fantastic-turnout/

It was when someone queried the possible inclusion of a few Gypsy pitches that I particularly listened up. ‘Here we go’ I thought. And indeed we did.

Firstly the difficulty with which the local Councillor had in addressing this question wins my sympathy. When I give talks to groups, the minute I show signs of siding with the Gypsies and Travellers, hostility mounts. For anyone in local politics, or indeed national politics, this is not a vote-winner and he wants to retain his position. All he could say was that Gypsies had no connection with the area and would not belong, or words to that effect. Of course, they are widely deemed not to belong anywhere and thus it has been through the centuries and, in the case of Romany Gypsies, right across Europe since they left India over 1,000 years ago.

The frustrating thing is that the very people who object exacerbate the ‘problem’ of unauthorised sites. As a rule, those tucked-away sites (how many of you have been on one?) where the amenities are in place and functioning, are kept immaculately and would put many of us householders to shame. I wish I was as tidy! Romany Gypsies take enormous pride in keeping their trailers neat and polished, themselves and their children squeaky clean. I am embarrassed that I have to patronise them in this way by saying this, but it seems it is necessary.

I heard typical unthinking comments that saddened and angered me. One person commented on the possibility of Gypsies being part of the community, along the lines, ‘What! and near a play centre?’ as if this were some plan for a leper colony or establishment for free-range convicts. Someone else commented with words to the effect, ‘Well obviously, this is not something we would want here, is it, everyone?’ Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are human beings who at times may seem outwardly defensive, but are actually so cowed by public opinion, they stick together and rarely appear to defend themselves at such meetings. They may be different in some ways; their old values are strongly towards family loyalty, living close to nature, being self-reliant, resourceful and not relying on the state. Bad press over the years and, arguably, unsightly behaviour of New Age Travellers who have sprung from mainstream society – yes, the likes of you and me - seem to have inculcated a different view in the public consciousness. Of course there are good and bad in all sections of society, but sticking labels on an entire group of people can only be bad – and indeed possibly illegal.

I am not going into all the reasons why this kind of bigoted racism should be a thing of the past; or why this group of people still sometimes chooses to live on the periphery. My books do enough and I give talks to resistant groups of people until I am blue in the face. I see things from the other side; attending Gypsy and Traveller forums; visiting sites where the antiquated drainage system overflows after a storm, and ‘sheds’ used for washing clothes and bathing children are freezing, and so on. For this the people pay rents and taxes – for a bit of hard standing, running water and electricity. Their home they provide themselves. I was invited to go to a workshop in Leatherhead on Thursday addressing issues relating to education of Traveller children; parents want their children to go to school, get qualifications and a good job. People are working very hard now to bring these people in from the cold. You may have seen Lord Avebury’s response to my piece on Pennypot Lane. http://bit.ly/a68k74

I would be pleased to see a small Gypsy site integrated with the new Deepcut proposals. Let us go down in history as being the first to actually welcome (some will say I am back in fiction again) this ethnic group. This is not to promote my books; my involvement has gone way beyond that, but I hope they do help to foster greater understanding. I’ve heard all the arguments during the past seven years or so I’ve been into this subject. It’s time we all stopped pre-judging and showed some humanity.