Heide and Iain’s Newsletter

Comedy fiction and general silliness

 

 

Heide: Hello, {{ subscriber.first_name | capitalize() or "friend" }} 

Spring is definitely in the air, although the weather in the UK can’t decide if it wants to be warm or cold.

Iain: We had our first face-to-face meeting since last summer (socially distanced and in a garden) and it was a bit cool.

Heide: But warm enough when the sun came out. Have you been out and about much?

Iain: I have. Last week, I went on a cycle ride in the local area (my knees are still recovering) and it ended at the house where Mr Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien lived as a boy. It’s only a mile from my own home.

 

 

Heide: Interesting.

Iain: Well, it’s just a house. Not a museum. No blue plaque. No elven queens peering from upstairs windows. But it’s nice to know these places are there.

Heide: I wonder if any of our newsletter subscribers have minor interesting literary connections near where they live?

Iain: It would be interesting to know. Do tell us. I’ve also been looking for places to put our fairy story doors.

Heide: Ah, yes. This is connected to a children’s book we’ve contributed to this year. An illustrator friend, Mike Watts —

Iain: Who created most of the Clovenhoof book covers.

Heide: Right. Mike Watts wanted to create a book during last year’s lockdown and we provided the words to go with his pictures. And someone —

Iain: I think it was you.

Heide: I’m not sure that it was, thought it would be a neat idea to install some fairy doors on trees in the local area and there’s a QR code inside the door that if you scan it, takes you to a free story on the internet.

Iain: You were given the important task of creating the doors.

Heide: Well, you can buy them off the internet. I varnished them and put the QR codes inside.

Iain: And I’ve put a few of them in key locations, one while I was at a stately home yesterday where I met my parents for the first time in many months.

Heide: Your parents live at a stately home?

Iain: No, silly. They were visiting too. Burghley House near Stamford is sort of halfway between them and us. There’s lovely grounds and quite a few deer.

Heide: Nice.

Iain: Well, apparently we were lucky to escape with our lives, according to this one star review on TripAdvisor I found.

Iain: Apart from fairy doors, have you done anything else creative recently?

Heide: Well, as you know I have an endless fascination for making things out of unusual materials, so I made a sewing machine cover out of tetrapaks (juice cartons), covered with fabric.

Iain: No harm in that I suppose.

Heide: Not too much. I did knock the pendulum off our clock while I was trying to manipulate it under the sewing machine.

Iain: But we ought to point out to our subscribers that we’ve been doing proper writer stuff too.

Heide: Oh, yes. We’ve produced two new audiobooks that should be out soon. The wonderful actor, Matthew Lloyd Davies, has recorded the narration for Oddjobs 5 and A Heart in the Right Place.

Iain: Ah, our tender father/son road-trip novel. With added werewolves.

Heide: We’ve also got three new novels coming out this summer.

Iain: That’s right. Three novels in a new series. We will share more details about them in a future newsletter.

Heide: And we’ll be asking our subscribers if they want to be part of an advanced reader team.

Iain: Yes, indeed. Right, I’m off on another bike ride now, this time to Sutton Park.

Heide: Famous literary connections there?

Iain: Do the haunts of Mr Jeremy Clovenhoof count as famous literary connections?

Heide: There are deer in Sutton Park too, you know.

Iain: I’d best be careful.

 

[Dear reader: please note that Iain avoided any deer but managed to cycle into a tree.]

 

 

 

ALL THE LINKS:

 

Heide and Iain’s website: www.pigeonparkpress.com

The Comedy Kitchen: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2098850213744767/

Clovenhoof Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Clovenhoof-Books-285544508177333/

Oddjobs Discussion page: https://www.facebook.com/OddjobsBooks/

Our books on Amazon (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B008GK6RX0

Our books on Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B008GK6RX0

E-mail us at: info@pigeonparkpress.com