It's Publication Day for The Ghost lake!

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

The day is finally here.

It’s publication day for The Ghost Lake. My nature/landscape memoir is now available to purchase at shops and in libraries around the country. Thank you to those who have already pre ordered, your books will be arriving any time now and I’d love to see where they end up. Tag me on Instagram (@wendycat1978) or Twitter (@wondykitten)

Last night I held a little zoom celebration/launch for my paid subscribers, and it was a joyous occasion. I got to bed into some of the themes in The Ghost Lake, read a little out loud and take questions, in a safe space full of engage, interested people. Thank you to those who came along.

I couldn’t decide what to post today. Readers of this newsletter have watched my journey to getting the book published, and today, there is not much I can say except, we got there, and it is in part thanks to you. You have taken an interest in my work, paid subscribers have even supported me financially, and that small steady income has meant that I had more time to write, more time to work on my book. I was so pleased to see the first copy out in the wild in a photo from subscriber and friend

Elaine Lawson

- your post made my day. Thank you.

Writing a book is a collaborative process. From the people who guide you, to the people who protect your space for you, to the people who fuel you when they don’t even know they are doing it, so I thought today would be a good day to share the acknowledgements that appear in the back of The Ghost Lake.

Thankyou so much for getting me here.

x

Acknowledgements

It feels like a lifetime ago that I began work on The Ghost Lake. This makes it difficult to thank everyone by name, because there have been so many people I have met along the way. If I ever spoke to you about the book and you responded in a positive way, if you encouraged me, if you said you’d want to read it, if you said we need more writers from non-traditional backgrounds, if you were someone who was excited for me, thank you.

I began my writing career in my thirties, drawn to poetry during a very difficult time. I began my reading career much earlier, when my mum first passed me a Read It Yourself book and told me to have a go. All creative writing comes first from reading and the realisation that books do not magically appear, that someone is writing the books you read. It takes courage to put yourself forward and be that writer, especially if you come from a background or community that cannot easily access or experience the creative arts; a background in which the creative arts are not part of your community experience. To the writers who came before me, thank you. You were the people I could see that encouraged me to be.

I want to thank the library staff, all the library staff the world over. As a child I would take bags of books out of Scarborough library every week, hulking them back on the bus or the train. I was so anxious as a child and a teen that catching the bus was a traumatic experience, but for the love of books I would do it. You helped open the world to me when I struggled to leave my room.

I want to thank the historians, naturalists, geologists, record keepers, archaeologists, photographers. I also want to acknowledge the amateurs alongside the experts, the walkers, the people recording the intimacies of everyday life, the celebrators of landscape. You are the holders of stories, and so often many of you don’t make it into the history books. Without you I would not have been able to research my own landscape and the people who lived here.

Without the support of family and friends I would have gotten nowhere. I must therefore specifically thank my mum, my mother-in-law and my aunty Mary who shared her stories, her knowledge, her wine and her photographs with me when I was trying to piece together my dad’s childhood. Thanks also to my oldest friend, Cassandra, because so many of my best memories involve her. I want to thank my wonderful, kind and thoughtful friend Amy and also Matt for always being excited for me, even when Amy was going through the toughest of times. I also want to thank my friend Charlotte Oliver whose ability to keep up with me during cocktail hour, along with her cheerleading of my work, is so welcome.

I give heartfelt thanks to the Yorkshire Coast Stanza group. I always come away nourished from our Sunday meet ups and your continued support has meant the world to me.

There are so many people from the writing community that I would thank, too many to mention, but in particular Tanya Shadrick, Electra Rhodes, Nicola Chester, Helen Mort, Victoria Bennett and Polly Atkin, who are all people whose writing I admire so much and who, in various ways, have helped me to scaffold the potential of the book around my wobbly confidence.

Thank you also to the community of village dog walkers who asked after the book each time they saw me walking the old dog and thanks too to the old dog himself, Toby, who would never have read this, on account of being a dog. He died not long after I completed the manuscript. I wish I could tell him that when I was with him, I felt a part of his pack. He allowed me to see the world from a different, animal perspective, and I miss him dearly. My gait is ever so slightly lopsided without him.

Thank you to my co-editors at Spelt magazine, Steve Nash and Helen Dewbery, whose support around the magazine, and also on a personal level, has meant the world to me, and to the contributors and columnists who have opened a whole other nature writing world to me and trusted me with their poetry and creative non-fiction.

Thanks also to the Nan Shepherd Prize judges who first longlisted the partial manuscript of The Ghost Lake and allowed me to believe I might take the book further, and to the Alpine Fellowship Award who shortlisted an essay that went on to be a chapter in this book.

Writing a book is a collaborative process, and I am so grateful for the team that worked with me to lift it out of my head and into a dust jacket. Thanks to my agent, Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary, who is precise, efficient, bold and caring all at once. She has been there to cheer me on, even before she was my agent. I am so glad to have had you by my side through this process. Thanks to everyone at The Borough Press, HarperCollins but in particular to Sophia Schoepfer, whose careful editing, gentle handling of difficult subject matter and respect towards me as a writer ensured this book worked.

Thank you to the staff at Scarborough library and at the Scarborough Museums Trust and at the East Yorkshire Archives for helping me find what I needed while researching. Your passion for detail and research is a huge support for writers part of the scaffolding that helps writers write. And a heartfelt thank you to anyone who ever digitised documents and made them publicly available. If you are rural, poor and unable to travel, online digital repositories ensure that you are not marginalised.

Thank you to Professor Nicky Milner, whose experience working at Star Carr enhanced my knowledge and who allowed me to come to her office and try on Star Carr headdress replicas. A highlight of the book writing process. Also to Dr Charlotte Rowley and Dr Jess Bates whose knowledge, hospitality and enthusiasm are very appreciated.

Thank you also to Lindsey Tyson who welcomed me into her beautiful art studio.

Thank you to my dad, who will not read this now, which breaks my heart. He died during the writing of the book. I’d planned to interview him and gather all his stories, but I left it too late. He instilled in me a passion for my ancestry and for our farmingheritage. He is missed.

To the people who broke my heart along the way, to the people who said I couldn’t and who said I shouldn’t and who commented on my accent, or mocked the town where I grew up, you fuelled my fire, and should be thanked also.

Mostly I want to thank my husband, Chris Pratt, who never once told me to get a proper job. He is always my champion, always my safe place and my home.