I definitely intended the restoration of Tully to represent - I hope not too crudely - the restoration of Magnus' mind, his soul even. (As a soldier he would have been responsible for the destruction not just of buildings and posessions, but also of the enemy. He saw a lot of death in the Falklands and he was very young then.) But the rebuilding is also an act of (unconscious?) reparation for the "sins" of his father (not in fact his father.) Magnus' response to demolition was to build. Remember also that his decision to restore a tower house was his response to 9/11, having watched repeatedly & obsessively the 2 towers falling.

The effect on Fay wasn't anything I thought about consciously. I think she saw Magnus working at the tower when he should/could have been working at the marriage. Tully for Fay represented cold, darkness, discomfort. It wasn't her idea of a home. I think she saw it as a citadel in which Magnus was taking refuge. It wasn't a home - or not the sot of home she wanted.

But I think she felt guilty about that because she could see that the rebuilding was rebuilding Magnus. But still she resented the time, energy & expense spent on the enterprise. And perhaps she was jealous of Magnus' obsession with Tully. She thought of it as "the other woman".

I certainly understand Fay's resentment; no one likes to be superseded in her beloved's heart and attention. So for Fay, the tower was like a black hole that sucked up all of the energy Magnus could have focused on her and their marriage. It's like what Princess Diana said, "there were three of us in this marriage."

I am glad their story ends on a positive note since they seem to be two people who love each other desperately and having them part permanently would be too sad.

I think Magnus had to find his own way to put himself back together again. The British army doesn't encourage talking about injuries or emotions and the problem with PTSD in the military is there's so much stigma attached and mental illness is seens as a sign of wekness & failure. The UK charity COMBAT STRESS says on average it takes a veteran 13 years to work up the courage to come to them to ask for help. 13 years!!

Just dropping in to say that there's been a wonderful US blog review of UTK from Angieville - http://angieville.blogspot.com/2011/12/ ... llard.html

Interestingly, the first person to comment after the review mentions that she didn't like the cover and wouldn't have chosen the book for that reason. I still wonder if that cover isn't doing me any favours. I've reduced the price of the e-book to $0.99/99p but it still isn't selling as many as EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and HOUSE OF SILENCE.

Other news: we've moved back to the Highlands after more than 3 years renting in the south of Scotland. We missed the Highlands, we missed our friends and we couldn't afford property in the south, so we gave up renting and bought a modern house on the Black Isle (which isn't an island at all), a few minutes drive north of Inverness in Easter Ross.

And I've finally finished my supernatural romance! My agent is happy so she'll be sending that off in the New Year in one last attempt to find me a new publisher.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a peaceful New Year (with lots of reading time.)

Linda, I wish I could tell you why Untying isn't selling well. I thought it was just amazing. And you already know that I am ready to read anything you right.

Have a happy holiday to you too!

Long overdue, but I did finish Untying and loved it! I got a new Kindle for Christmas and read it again yesterday.

I'm still sort of confused as to HOW Magnus ends in the well. I thought his defending/moving around was all in his mind and then he's in a well and back in the present. Very jarring- for reader and Magnus!

I'm not sure that if I was Emily I would want Rick-- even if it was just a one night stand. The thought of that made me want to throw up a little bit. I would have searched for someone new!

Thanks, Lady Ross.

Magnus is patrolling the grounds at Tully. (Fay has mentioned that he used to do that when in one of his confused states.) He stands on the rotten wooden cover of the well, it gives way and he falls down the well. A tower house would have had a well in the grounds but Fay and Magnus weren't aware of its position as the area was overgrown. (If my memory serves, that area is referred to in Fay's narration as the wildlife garden because they've never cultivated it.)

Magnus' defensive actions are taking place somewhere else in his mind - another time and another place - but he is actually doing the things the narration describes. He has a rifle and he's "patrolling". Then when he's down the well he's in and out of the past and in and out of consciousness.

This is what PTSD is like. Watch this tv advert which was made to raise awareness of the condition. http://www.combatstress.org.uk/pages/cs_tv_advert.html
This is very like the scene in the kitchen which I describe, but I hadn't scene this film when I wrote the book.

I don't really understand your misgivings about Rick. He had a one-night stand with Fay long before he knew Emily. Emily now loves him and wants to marry him. I don't see why she'd fall out of love with him and look for someone new, just because she discovered something very embarrassing about his past love life. (Or as Shakespeare put it: "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.") It's all very awkward for everyone concerned and therein lies the comedy, but Rick didn't do anything wrong and he and Emily love each other. They'll cope!

I'm sure they would cope. I would just see it as a mental barrier to intimacy (for Emily and Rick). Always thinking about Rick and mother being together. I'm not sure I could move passed that. Emily seems to understand that it was a one-off situation.

I re-read the portion with Magnus, twice. It is beautifully written in that you feel like you are inside his mind. During his narration, I sort of had to push everything out of my mind to try to understand what was going on.

Yes, my agent said she found it a bit confusing. I said it was meant to be confusing and she was happy with that. I intend that section where Magnus relives his wartime memories to be pretty disturbing. We are inside Magnus' mind and it's a terrible place to be. I wanted the reader to understand (as Fay had learned to understand) that Magnus' body might be sitting in a pub having a beer but his mind could be partially in the Falklands or Iraq.

And this is how the violence in their marriage has occurred. He has lashed out believing himself to be in a war zone, under attack in some way. He has looked at Fay but seen the enemy. The ad I sent the link for demonstrates the danger the wife is in when she comes home. There's a soldier on the floor with a knife, he's trained to kill and there's an intruder at the door. Except it's not an intruder, it's his wife.

The statistics say most veterans' marriages affected by PTSD break down because of violence.

Yes, PTSD can be violent and awful. And I really felt for Magnus. I think it is fine (good) even for the reader to be confused. It's a first person narrative, so if the narrator is jarred, the reader should feel it is realistic. I definitely did.

A colleague of my husband came back from four tours of Afghanistan recently and he told me at Christmas party that he felt perpetually cold. He would simply shut down, blanking out for long periods of time and would become extremely, extremely cold. My husband has the cubicle next to him, and they sometimes knock to eachother as a means of keeping track that he is ok.

Oh, that is so sad. I suppose he is going into a kind of mental & emotional hibernation as a way of protecting his mind from the horror and stress of his job. Poor guy.