The website with my name that may have come up under searches for my name is no longer under my control. Due to circumstances beyond my control or influence I don’t have any access to it or ability to change its content. I’m sad about this but there’s nothing I can do.

If you have been looking for me, then you can visit my regular blog http://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com which is where I post usually two or three times a week. It also contains a Contact Me page, so people can get in contact privately.

If you are interested in finding out more about my books, you might like to investigate my Amazon pages:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=books-uk&field-author=Vivienne%20Tuffnell

or USA

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=books-uk&field-author=Vivienne%20Tuffnell

I hope to hear from you if you’ve got this far.

I confess I feel a bit awkward about this post because I’m someone who finds the process of self-promotion excruiatingly uncomfortable. I wasn’t brought up to “blow my own trumpet”, to sound my own praises. I’m old-fashioned British, if you like. But the world moves on, and uncomfortable as it is, the author needs to do some book promotion, even when she’d rather just shove it at you all and squeak, “There it is. Enjoy!” and run away, crimson with blushes.

I’m glad you can’t see me now, for that reason. Beetroot meets tomato, if you like.

The central premise of this book is that even strong, able people break down beyond the power of their own recuperation, due to the hand Life can deal them. I’ve been there. You probably have too. But have you ever sat at the computer, in the small hours of the morning, thinking, you really can’t go on, that “My heart is broken and I am dying inside”? Each of the six protagonists in the book come to this point, and in this space of despair, type those words into an internet search engine, and start the strangest and most powerful journey of their lives.

This is a book for a seeker, a book for those who wonder “What if?”. It’s a book that draws you into the world of each of the six characters and keeps you there. J said he wanted those six as his friends, and didn’t want the book to end because then that time with them would be over.

It’s not chicklit, it’s not murder mystery, it’s not vampires, it’s not spies or cops and robbers and it’s not romance. In fact, it’s quite hard to categorise because it doesn’t fit into any easy genre slot. It is itself and that’s probably the best way any book should be. If you’ve been through or are going through major life challenges, this is the book for you. It might be fiction, or it might not; there’s an ambiguity about the events that you need to make up your own mind about. But fiction or not, it’s also true in ways that go beyond literature.

The book is available as a paperback from Amazon, but it’s also available as a download, if you prefer that: http://www.lulu.com/product/strangers-pilgrims/6169550

I’d appreciate feedback if and when people read it; and if you like it, add a review at Amazon. Every little helps!

If you fancy keeping up with my news generally and maybe getting to know me as a person(well, a cyber person) I’d love to see you over at my main blog site http://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com which is where I post my thoughts, news, poems and photos. When I am ready to publish, I’ll be announcing it there and here, but please rest assured I value all the visits people have been making to either blog and would love to hear from you all.

In the meantime, take care and please drop by whenever you feel like it!

An author’s relationship with his/her characters is a very odd one. For myself, I find I am very deeply involved in their lives while I write about them and when a book finishes, it becomes almost painful to let them go. But it’s often important to let them go so another set of “friends” can come along. And sometimes they walk out of your life before you’re finished with them…

I wrote the following in pencil shortly after I moved here and found that I couldn’t write. I missed my old house very much and especially the view from my bedroom window that I gazed over my monitor at. I know I must have written this the first winter we were here, and it must have been on the beach. It’s also the first entry in that notebook that I know was written here.

” I look for you in every stranger’s face I see. Sometimes I think I see your eyes, your hair, your mouth. I wait to hear your voice when the phone rings, or see you across a crowded cafe. Hopeless. You’re not real. You don’t exist. I created you, your world.

“And yet. And yet I feel you out there, alive and real as the stones, the shingle that crunches beneath my feet, or the waves that roar and sigh as they hit the shore. I made you up, and yet you haunt me. Yours is not a tale told by an idiot. It’s real. Somewhere, somehow, both you and your world are real. I’m looking for the door so I can step in and join you. So far the only door is my computer screen.

“What are these insane longings for things that can never be?”    

Hurry quickly has never been my motto, and I’m afraid that nothing is happening here very fast.

That said, I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. It might be the  full moon or it might be that other things are moving along behind the scenes. I’ve been dreaming at night and sometimes by day (asleep or not) about the characters in my novels. It’s almost like being haunted, but in a benign way. These are people who I care about and beyond the letters on a page, they only have life within my head and my dreams.

I’m seriously hoping that this sudden return of my gang of friends is a sign that my own rather stilfed creativity is returning to me.

The following poem has been published several times, both in the UK, in the US and also on  my blogs, but I hope it speaks of my state of mind clearly.  

A box of dreams

I packed my dreams away,

Deep in a faded chocolate box

Filled with precious memories,

Theatre programmes and broken beads.

I layered them with lavender

To keep away the cosmic moth

And I forgot I’d ever dreamed.

One night I rose from sleep,

Left my body warm in bed,

And crept up the hidden stair

To find the forgotten place

Where cobwebbed windows

Filtered moonlight onto dusty boards.

Amid the cracked records,

The rags of triumphal dresses

And other detritus of my life,

I heard the strangest sound,

Like stars singing in a frozen sky.

The box lay where I had left it,

And when I could bear to look inside,

Instead of shreds and tatters

I found treasures bright with starlight,

Memories gilded by the sun of years,

And my dreams as I had left them,

Untarnished and unworn by time

I wrote my first poem aged five and my first novel aged ten. I have no record left of either, which is probably just as well. Juvenillia is only interesting to biographers; it tends to make the writer cringe.

I’ve been teetering on the brink of having a novel accepted for publication for years now and always things seem to just fall back on the wrong side. I’ve a drawer full of letters from editors and agents praising my work and telling me to keep trying and then being so terribly sorry they can’t take a risk on a total unknown.

Well, meet me halfway, guys!

This blog is intended as a means of promoting my books when they are released, via several media, in the next year. This page will be updated when I feel I should say more.

In the meantime, stay tuned and watch this space.

Oh and you are allowed to blink. Right now, you won’t miss anything but I can’t guarantee this later…

cheers!

Viv