Panormitis Week

[Today’s photos are from this time last year; it looked remarkably similar this weekend.]
This week sees the festival of Panormitis, the celebration of the archangel Michaelis (of Panormitis), the island’s saint. There will be special boat schedules laid on to bring pilgrims and visitors from Rhodes and Kos, the buses will be going back and forth across the island, and the taxis, some people will walk there, and others will come to stay for the week or a few days, some staying at the monastery cells. I expect they have been booked up for a long time. There will be a market, our school has its souvlaki stall already set up, and there will be others. Some local businesses will set up stalls too, while others will consist of off-islanders and their… wares, or bewares perhaps.

Apart from a few basket weavers, a candle seller and a smattering of other arts and crafts, the market tends to be plastic toys, underwear, household goods and things you never realised you needed until you realised you didn’t have one; multi-purpose tools, plastic implements for the kitchen and novelty desktop knickknacks. The atmosphere of the market is usually more entertaining than the things for sale, and I don’t mean the local business like Michaelis’ pet supplies, or the school’s and others souvlakis and fast food stands, of course.

I’m not sure what our plans are this year as the festival is on a working day. I think we’ll see how the mood takes. A couple of years ago we walked there, taking the not so short short-cuts (and still coming out ten paces behind a lady who was walking the road in front of us). One year we celebrated up at Kokimides, actually, two years, one of which was blowing a gale that nearly swept us off the road. In other years we have: travelled there in the back of a transit van, gone there in the back of a flatbed truck, and we’ve even stayed at Marathunda for the festival weekend, making a holiday of it.

If we don’t make it this year I’ll see if I can rob some photos from someone to share with you. I only say I might not because a lot is going on at my desk. In a nutshell: one book is 90% ready to release, just waiting on a cover. Another is at 70% of the editing stage (this is an old one, re-edited which is going to be re-released under a new cover), another is at the 80% draft one stage – that one’s just been pouring out for no apparent reason, and ‘The Saddling’ follow up, ‘The Witchling’ is ready to go into final draft stage next, when some of these other tasks are out of the way. I am also 80% towards the end of a screenplay, first draft. All that is one of the reasons I’ve not been keeping up my author’s blog (must get around to it one day), and a reason why I’ve been at home in the office a lot. At this time of year, I can.

Saturday was a perfect day for me. Up at six and to work: a few hours on the screenplay (too many hours in one sitting and the writing becomes unfocused), a couple of chapters edited for the rerelease, some discussion with cover designers about two covers currently on order, and a chapter or two of the other thing that’s currently snowballing towards its denouement. While I am doing time at the desk (nine hours), Neil is tidying the house, putting the laundry away, making mugs of tea, nipping to the shops, dusting things, and preparing lunch, which he later feeds me and washes up so I can get back to the writing. I heartily approve of this marriage lark. No, seriously, if you enjoy what I write (there must be one of you) then you’ve Neil to thank because he gives me the time to do it.

Anyway, enough ramble. Have a good week! Now it’s back to the edits and the plotting and the typing…

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Saturday photos

A collection of recent images for you today, taken on a day out to Nimborio, to see you through the weekend.

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Visitors, Nimborio and a Turkish Fire

We had a wonderful lunch in Nimborio on Wednesday. Not at the taverna, that has closed for the season. In fact, thanks to parking, we had to drive right through it to get to where we needed to be; a good job there were no tables outside. Walking down to Yialos, I felt the cold of winter on the breeze, but reaching the bottom of the Kali Strata was surprised to see a large group of day-trippers in shorts who had poured of the Sea Dreams. It was so wintery up in the village, I’d forgotten that there were still tourists visiting the island, and loads of them too.

A quick shop for a new keyboard to replace the one I’ve mashed out, some other shopping from Georgina’s (essentials such as decent tea bags and tomato soup – and much cheaper than at other places), a quick beer while we waited for our lift and then off around the headland to lunch.

On the way back, after being caught up in the traffic waiting to board the Blue Star and nearly ending up in Kos, we saw a long cloud of what I took to be fire-smoke hanging across Turkey and wending its way towards the west, where the sun was setting. Getting out of the car in Horio, my suspicions that this was a fire over there were confirmed by the smell in the air. I asked Yianni and a few others if they knew anything about it. They took a cursory glance across the water and weren’t too bothered if that country was on fire. Not surprising really. No sign of the cloud the following morning, and no sign of any news items online. Perhaps it was a local bushfire or something.

There will be more pictures from Wednesday in the future; I took quite a few and will add them into my collection of pics to post one day when I have nothing else to talk about.

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Book update

I have now seen the Kindle, phone and tablet versions of ‘Symi, Stuff & Nonsense’ and it looks excellent. Just waiting for some proofreading notes to come back, and I still need to send the artwork form off to the cover designer (today), and so I should have a cover in a week or two.

In other book news; it was thrilling to hear that Penzance library now has a copy of ‘Village View’ on its shelves. Normally, libraries order books through a central agency, with whom the book has to be registered. It isn’t, in this case, so I’m not sure how our friends in Penzance pulled that one off, but if you’re in the area and want to read it, I’d phone first to make sure they have it in. Apparently, it is already out on loan. If you have nothing better to do, you could always petition your local library (assuming such things still exist) and ask that they stock ‘Symi 85600’ and the rest – see what they say. Or, if you are part of a book club, you could suggest ‘The Saddling‘ as a read, or any of my titles. One book club has already used that as one of their monthly reads. All these things help authors get some notice, a couple of sales and also those all-important reviews on Amazon. On which note, here is a post I have put on my author page on Facebook, for those who don’t use Facebook.

Two more excellent reviews for The Saddling! Three more and I will hit the magic 20 reviews. Can you help? https://goo.gl/mIpQQB

“I was cold the entire time I was reading this book, I could feel the cold mud seeping in my shoes and the icy winds, the cold rooms and atmosphere. James Collins has the ability to transport you right into the story, so you are aware of wearing the smelly sheepskin and almost being able to reach out and touch naked flesh.”

Thank you for the review! Wait until you read ‘The Witchling’, you should warm up a bit as the element behind that story is fire (summer), whereas with The Saddling it was water (winter).

“I read ‘The Saddling’ for book club. Really gripping story and once I started, I was compelled to pick the book up whenever I could. Excellent sense of anticipation in the build up to ‘The Saddling’ ritual. Definitely scope for a sequel. Quite dark at times but also a beautiful romance underlies the narrative, which I found very touching.”

Thank you for the review. A sequel is on its way (second draft stage now). The romance continues and is tested, there is another ritual too. ‘The Witchling’ is set against the summer solstice, whereas The Saddling was the winter solstice.

Enough about books for now. We are off to Nimborio today (Tuesday) for lunch, and I will take the camera. If I can, I will take some photos of the waves that are being white-horsed by the wind this morning. It’s a north wind too, which means the temperature in the house has dropped suddenly. No more shorts or sandals. It’s not quite thermal underwear time, but it’s getting there. The sad thing is, the chilli plant has just come into flower but I think it’s rather late in the season for it to survive and give us chillies. But then, what do I know about any kind of plants? One to keep an eye on.

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Some news

There is some more news about the film, ‘The 13^th‘ which showed at a film festival in London last night. It has been nominated for Best Actor, Kurtis Stacey, and Best Screenplay, James Collins & Chris Hastings. The announcements will be made on or just after Sunday.

In scintillating home news, the winter drapes have gone up across the front door in the porch to keep the draft out of the one-inch gap, and across the living room/hall entrance, which has no door, to insulate the living room a little. The quilt is ready to go over the duvet on the bed and double up as a cover for the balcony windows when it is really cold. Extendable shower curtain rails are worth their weight in aluminium as they are so easy to put up and take down again; no need for a drill. With my non-existent DIY skills, that’s a great advantage.

On Symi generally, the breeze is cooler now, there are few boats in the harbour, though three day-trip boats have still been arriving each day. The winter chairs are outside the bar, in limited form, and the atmosphere inside has warmed up, not that it was cold before, but you know what I mean. The village is quiet, there is cloud cover today (Tuesday), and the sea is grey, but some blue sky can still be seen. The Panormitis festival is coming up in less than a week, but we’re still not sure if we will make it this year, we shall see. And right here before me, my keyboard is now sticking on the keys for O and A, which is making for some very interesting typos, unless I go back and check very carefully. And that’s it for today.

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